The Chinese state media are delighted with drastic budget cuts at Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, the American media funded by the government which have for decades Beijing demonstrations on their coverage of human rights violations in China.
Voice of America and Radio Free Asia has long transmitted news in countries where access to specific information from the outside world was seriously limited. Radio Free Asia, for example, broadcasts in Mandarin, Cantonese, Uighur, Tibetan and other languages.
In China, where the Communist Party leading has made its doors against the influence of America and its Western allies on world opinion, the state media and the nationalists hailed the problems encountered by the media funded by the United States as justification of their complaints. Authorities have for years the voice of the voice of America and radio transmissions from Radio Free Asia.
The Global Times, a journal of the Communist Party, denounced the voice of America as a “first -line propaganda tool” and a “factory of lies”.
“Almost all malicious lies on China have fingerprints from VOA everywhere,” wrote the newspaper in a editorial on MondayCiting what he described as biased reports on Taiwan, troubles in Hong Kong and in the coronavirus pandemic.
The media and their ability to operate are in question after President Trump signed a decree calling for the dismantling of the agency for the world media, the federal agency that supervises them on Friday. At Voice of America, hundreds of employees in Washington have been informed that they were on paid leave. Radio Free Asia said the federal subsidies that financed it Finished on Saturday Morning.
The Chinese government has argued that the domination of the American soft power, in the form of these sources of information, has undermined China’s security in the country and its economic and geopolitical interests abroad. This insecurity was only sharpened under the direction of President Xi Jinping, who put pressure for the voice of China, more specifically that of the party, to be heard stronger.
“In this context, the actions of the Trump administration are enthusiastic celebration reasons,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, a research organization. “In a few weeks, Trump seems to have split his throat of American influence.”
For decades, Chinese auditors have passed on Voice of America for censored news at home – a cover that included the toll of natural disasters and repression on pro -democracy demonstrators. Its programs on politics and culture also shaped the thought of a generation of intellectuals and liberal thinkers in the 1970s and 80s, when the country gradually reopened after years of isolation.
In 1989, Voice of America expanded its Mandarin service to cover the pro-democracy movement that swept the country and the deadly government’s repression against the pro-democracy demonstrators around Tiananmen square. The network correspondents were among the expenses expelled from China that year.
Radio Free Asia stood out as a source of crucial news on Xinjiang and Tibet, where foreign journalists have limited access and on dissidents elsewhere in the country. Radio Free Asia’s Ughur Service reports in recent years have been noted to expose the existence of internment camps in the Xinjiang and publish the first death accounts in the camps.
Over the past decade, Chinese authorities have repeatedly sought to retaliate against Uighur journalists working with the broadcaster. He owned more than 50 parents of journalists in Xinjiang staff in 2021. A journalist, Gulchehra Hoja, an Uighur American working for Radio Free Asia, said in 2018 that two dozen family members had been detained in Xinjiang.
James Millward, professor at the University of Georgetown and Expert in Uighur questions, said that he had been an external reviewer for the Uighur Radio Free Asia service and knew the work of the broadcaster. “I know the pain they take to make their stories precise and attractive to the world community they serve,” he said. “All of this was accomplished by a small staff at a small cost.”
“To cancel it, the willingly grateful as Trump did, perhaps without even knowing that he was doing it, is reckless and unnecessarily cruel to the people that the United States is supposed to support,” he added.
Bay Fang, President and Chief Executive Officer of Radio Free Asia, said in a statement That the termination of the federal subsidy which finances the outlet was a “reward for dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party, which wanted nothing better than to pass their influence in the information space.” Ms. Fang said the organization planned to challenge the order.
In an article on social networks Sunday, Hu Xijin, the former editor -in -chief of the Global Times, celebrated the “paralysis” of the media, calling it “very rewarding”.
While noting that political tensions within the Trump administration had finally led to his problems, he said that he thought that all the Chinese would be happy to see “the ideological anti-Chinese fortress raped from the interior and dispersed like birds and beasts”.
