U.S. imposes visa limits on 5 Chinese state media outlets

U.S. and Chinese flags are seen in Beijing, China, on May 28, 2019. The U.S. State Department recently announced a cap on visas for five Chinese state media outlets. (Reuters/Jason Lee)

U.S. and Chinese flags are seen in Beijing, China, on May 28, 2019. The U.S. State Department recently announced a cap on visas for five Chinese state media outlets. (Reuters/Jason Lee)

The U.S. Department of State said in a statement on Monday that it would limit the number of visas available for Chinese journalists working at five designated media organizations. The outlets — Xinhua, CGTN, China Radio, China Daily, and The People’s Daily — will be limited to 100 visas in total. The announcement follows China’s decision on February 19 to expel three Wall Street Journal reporters, one day after the U.S. government reclassified the five outlets now subject to the visa cap as “foreign missions.”

Meanwhile, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China found in its annual report that “not one correspondent surveyed said reporting conditions in China improved – for the second consecutive year.” The report also found that Chinese authorities have weaponized visas against the foreign press by issuing truncated press credentials and expelling journalists by declining to renewal their credentials. Read the full report here.

On February 25, a Nigerian nongovernmental organization filed a lawsuit against the country’s communications regulator over security forces’ warrantless access to telecom subscribers’ information. CPJ’s reporting was referenced and submitted as evidence in the suit.

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From left to right: U.S. Senator Ron Wyden; CPJ Washington Advocacy Manager Michael De Dora; and Hatice Cengiz, Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée, at an event in the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C., on March 3. (Screenshot taken from event live stream hosted on Twitter by Senator Wyden, @RonWyden.)

On Tuesday, CPJ Washington Advocacy Manager Michael De Dora spoke at a Senate event organized by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) on the White House’s inaction on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. De Dora asked the Trump administration to release an unclassified report on Khashoggi’s murder immediately, and said that Congress should work to ensure that Saudi Arabia and the Trump administration are held accountable.

This month marked the one-year anniversary of the One Free Press Coalition, a group of over 35 media outlets highlighting cases of journalists under threat around the world. The coalition, kickstarted by Forbes, CPJ, and the International Women’s Media Foundation, uses their collective reach to raise awareness of specific journalists’ cases and to shine a light on global press freedom threats. At least 50 journalists have been featured on the coalition’s list, and ten of them have been released since it began.

The March list includes journalist Chen Qiushi, missing in China after reporting on the coronavirus, and Brazilian reporter Patrícia Campos Mello, who was recently the target of an online harassment campaign, and who received CPJ’s 2019 International Press Freedom Award.

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