Senior U.S. diplomat for East Asia David Stilwell told reporters on Monday that four major Chinese media outlets would be treated as propaganda under control of their government.
As U.S.-China tensions wind ever tighter in the march toward the U.S. November presidential election, Stilwell told reporters that China Central Television, the China News Service, the People’s Daily, and the Global Times will all be officially recognized as “propaganda outlets” controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
These outlets will join five others who faced the same consequences based on similar allegations in February. This was followed in March by a decision to cut the number of Chinese journalists allowed to work in U.S. offices by over 50 percent — from 160 to 100. The decision was made in light of the“long-standing intimidation and harassment of journalists” perpetrated by Beijing.
China answered by revoking the accreditation of American journalists with the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. They will be officially expelled when their credentials expire at the end of the year.
When repeatedly questioned about former national security adviser John Bolton’s book — which claims that President Trump has solicited President Xi Jinping’s aid in reelection — both Stilwell and State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus refused to comment, saying it was not an intended subject of the briefing.
“The Communist Party does not just exercise operational control over these propaganda entities, but it has full editorial control over their content,” Stilwell said. “This … is an obvious step in increasing the transparency of these and other [Chinese] government propaganda activities in the United States.”
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