China Intimidates U.S. Media Networks to Protect Party Reputation

Last Thursday, December 19, The Chinese government renewed press accreditation for all Bloomberg News journalists and some New York Times journalists reporting from China. Prior to Thursday, about 24 New York Times and Bloomberg foreign correspondents were in fear of being expelled from China. Chinese authorities were withholding from issuing resident journalist visas for the foreign staff working in China of these two major U.S. news organizations.

Several journalists and China experts proposed the U.S. retaliate by denying visas to Chinese journalist.  During his brief visit, Vice President Joe Biden highlighted the issue after meeting with U.S. journalists.  Mr. Biden said, “Innovation thrives where people breathe freely, speak freely, are able to challenge orthodoxy, where newspapers can report the truth without fear of consequences,” when addressing Business executives in Beijing.

The recent crackdown by the Chinese government on foreign journalists was spurred by Times’ and Bloomberg’s articles exposing corruption and immense wealth acquired by the party elite and their family.  Over the year, websites of both news organizations were blocked.  The Chinese government is used to critical coverage on China’s human rights violations; however, the recent focus by the two U.S. media companies on the party elite seems to have hit a nerve.

In June 2012, Bloomberg published a piece on the millions of dollars in wealth that the then-upcoming President Xi Jinping’s relatives had accrued.  The New York Times followed by publishing an in-depth exposé on the $2.7 billion in assets Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s relatives controlled during his term in office.

China appears to be antagonizing U.S. media companies by threatening expulsion in response to these stories. And so far, this tactic has proven to be effective. It was alleged top editors at Bloomberg decided not to publish an investigative piece that linked a top Chinese tycoon to family members of the top Communist Party leaders.

But China’s recent crackdown on foreign correspondents is larger than an issue of freedom of press and warrants more attention.  This unprecedented crackdown on foreign journalists is motivated not by the government’s fear of the West learning about the immense level of corruption within the top party elite, but out of fear that the Chinese public could gain access to such information. The government is far more concerned with these investigative pieces reaching social media platforms in China, which the government is struggling to control.

Reports of corruption pose a threat to the party narrative that the central government has so carefully developed. China’s countrywide firewall is well known, as is the enormous amount of financial and human resources it pours into censorship. But even though China’s efforts have been successful on one level, monitoring more than 300 million micro bloggers and a growing number of online communities of concerned citizens, censorship is becoming an increasingly daunting task. Social media such as the Chinese state sponsored version of Twitter, serves as a space for concerned individuals to meet millions of like-minded citizens to exchange thoughts and information.  Social media use has exploded in China, fuelled by a growing appetite for information among the growing educated and middle class population.

As the second largest economy in the world, China seems to have reached a new level of confidence, flexing its muscles more than ever. It was only about five years ago when China pledged to ease restrictions for foreign reporters in its effort to host the 2008 Olympics.  Now it appears to have turned that policy on its head.