Ever since the restoration of U.S.-China diplomatic ties in 1979, Beijing has allowed American media organizations, newspapers, and magazines to establish bureaus on the mainland. Although these operations were initially quite small throughout the 1980s and 1990s, China-based newsrooms kept growing during the late 2000s to reflect China’s growing international stature as the “big story.” In 2011, both Bloomberg and the New York Times announced the opening of expanded offices, with the latter launching a Chinese-language edition in 2012. But with increased coverage came increased criticism, prompting increased efforts by Beijing to try and control its diminished reputation abroad – and its loss of face.
One of Beijing’s most newsworthy efforts to control the criticism involves the withholding of visas for foreign journalists. Every December, those foreign journalists working legally in China are required to apply for visa renewal. Late last year, while many journalists were still waiting for visa renewals, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden raised the issue in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and publicly chided Beijing, stating the United States has “profound disagreements” with the “treatment of U.S. journalists” in China.
Eventually most of the delayed visas were renewed, and many had hopes the problem had gone away. But last Thursday, New York Times reporter Austin Ramzy, a journalist who previously worked in China six years for Time magazine, boarded a flight to Taipei after being refused the renewal of his journalist visa. Ramzy will continue his reporting from Taiwan while applying for a visa. At a press conference on Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang explained that Ramzy was not being expelled or forced to leave — rather that Ramzy had violated Chinese regulations by continuing to travel to China on his previous unexpired journalist visa while waiting for a new visa. Times representatives pointed out that Ramzy’s old visa was never cancelled by the government. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China issued a statement criticizing the government, stating, “Suggestions by Chinese officials that Mr Ramzy did not correctly comply with Chinese visa regulations are disingenuous; the regulations are unclear and have not been applied to other journalists in similar situations to that of Ramzy.”
Many believe the visa renewal issues faced by Ramzy and other journalists stem from an October 2012 story published by the New York Times about the massive wealth amassed by then Premier Wen Jiabao’s family. Following the publication of the story, the New York Times website was blocked and a seasoned foreign correspondent, Chris Buckley, was asked to leave the country after Beijing refused to grant him a visa in December 2012. Interestingly, China’s Foreign Ministry disingenuously claimed Buckley hadn’t been expelled – merely that he incorrectly filled out his visa application.
Also in 2012, Bloomberg had roiled the waters in China for a series of groundbreaking stories that disclosed the family wealth of two top Chinese officials: disgraced party boss Bo Xilai and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Following these prize-winning investigations, China ordered local financial institutions to refrain from purchasing Bloomberg terminals — the main profit-generating engine of the media empire — and blocked its website. Things got worse in early November, when the New York Times reported that Bloomberg journalists had accused editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler of suppressing an investigation into the wealth of a Chinese tycoon and his links with the Chinese government, for fear it would offend officials in Beijing. The publication of a story about J.P. Morgan Chase’s allegedly hiring Wen’s daughter in exchange for access to high officials also angered officials in Beijing.
What is clear is both Washington and Beijing will be fighting these battles for some time to come. Washington will continue to insist on the proper treatment of journalists and respect for the freedom of the press, while Beijing will be particularly sensitive to their anti-corruption work being outsourced to outsiders. Should these issues continue unresolved, expect to see more America-bashing by the Chinese media.
Many of the Chinese I have spoken to believe the U.S. is a land of golden opportunity – unchanged from the Gold Mountain days of yesteryear when Chinese migrants flocked to California to work in the gold mines. The United States in their imagination no longer exists, if it ever did. Many Chinese migrants during that period lost their lives in the mines, or later found work building the railway, and also losing their lives as many were hired to handle the explosives. Sure, in comparison, the schools are better, the environment cleaner, and the welfare system more generous. But the more developed U.S. still confronts many of the same problems faced by a developing China – vast inequality, deep-seated racism, rampant greed, and a breakdown of the family unit. Beijing should focus its propaganda efforts not on blocking the dissemination of information – rather encouraging the free flow of truthful information from what it considers its critic nations. For example, in the recent debate over whose pollution is worse, Beijing or New Delhi, Chinese media could do more in explaining how Beijing controls the number of cars allowed to be sold in a year and has adopted a health alert system that sometimes closes large factories on particularly polluted days. The debate should not be about whether New Delhi may or may not have dirtier air than Beijing, but how India should make air quality information available to its citizens, or how China’s air compares or compared to other nations in similar stages of development. In so doing, Beijing can take the mature stance and acknowledge its shortcomings while educating its public on how difficult these universal problems are to solve, and more importantly, what steps it is taking to solve these problems.
