Congress Responds to China’s Crackdown on U.S. Journalists: Will It Be Enough?

As detailed in my previous post on this topic, some two dozen U.S. journalists currently face expulsion from China for investigative reporting on the personal wealth and financial ties of top Chinese government officials. This follows a pattern of  harassment including the expulsion of at least three American journalists since 2012 for reporting critical of the Chinese government. A crackdown on foreign journalists in China is clearly underway.

Vice-President Biden raised this issue and met with endangered U.S. journalists during his recent visit to Beijing. In a hopeful further step toward addressing the issue, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) met last week for a roundtable discussion on China’s treatment of foreign journalists. Chaired by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), roundtable panelists included New York Times Beijing correspondent Edward Wong, TIME China bureau chief Hannah Beech, Bob Dietz of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Sarah Cook of Freedom House, and freelance journalist Paul Mooney. Mooney is among the journalists recently expelled from China for his reporting.

Senator Brown issued a strong statement to China on behalf of journalists: “Today I am calling on China to immediately cease its policy of harassing foreign journalists, denying and delaying their visas, and blocking the websites of foreign media in China. If the situation does not improve, we must consider other steps that Congress may take to address the issue.” As Brown pointed out in his statement, this is not only an issue of press freedom but also an economic issue. International economic cooperation and fair market access depend on an open news flow among nations doing business with one another, as Kathy Chu and William Launder also point out in The Wall Street Journal.

The “nuclear option” of taking visa reciprocity measures against China was one of the questions raised at the CECC roundtable. This would mean meeting China’s visa denials with retaliatory U.S. visa limits for Chinese reporters, and would affect the hundreds of Chinese reporters currently working in the United States. Opinions sharply differ on this option.

In a highly revealing statement, Paul Mooney argued that visa reciprocity measures may be the only way to change Beijing’s treatment of foreign journalists. “I don’t want to see my Chinese colleagues prevented from reporting in the United States,” said Mooney, “However, delaying visas for Chinese journalists or for media and propaganda officials who are not involved in the daily work of journalism would send a clear signal to Beijing.” Mooney added that there are precedents for such action in other Western governments’ dealings with China: “I’ve heard of several cases in which foreign governments have delayed issuing visas to Chinese journalists and officials in retaliation for such policies, and in these cases, China immediately backed down.” Once such country was France, according to The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos.

Others who have suggested taking visa reciprocity measures against China include the Washington Post editorial board and Elizabeth C. Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations. Many, however, are opposed to targeting innocent Chinese reporters with such actions. Among those opposed are CPJ and the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, as CPJ’s Bob Dietz explained in his statement to the CECC roundtable. Elizabeth M. Lynch at China Law and Policy favors targeting Chinese officials, such as those with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or Public Security Bureau which are responsible for the unfair treatment of foreign journalists in China. As Paul Mooney suggested, Chinese media executives with close ties to the Communist Party and its propaganda department could also be effective targets for visa reciprocity measures. Judging from the experiences of other countries described by Paul Mooney and Evan Osnos, a forceful threat of such measures may be sufficient to correct Beijing’s bad behavior.

In any case, China’s unfair treatment of U.S. and other foreign journalists merits a strong response. Strength is the only language China’s rulers appear to understand. Polite requests and appeals to reason will not work. Beijing must receive a clear message from Washington that any further unfair treatment of U.S. journalists in China will be met, not with weak-kneed expressions of “disappointment” or “concern,” but with consequences.