WSJ reports the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday it was demanding all U.S. nationals working for The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post whose credentials expire by the end of the year turn those credentials in within 10 days.
The measure would affect most of the U.S. journalists working at those newspapers in China, which issues press credentials for up to 12 months and has recently limited them to six and, in some cases, as little as one month.
The affected reporters won’t be allowed to report anywhere in China, including the semiautonomous territories of Hong Kong and Macau, the statement said.
It also ordered the three newspapers and two other media outlets—Voice of America and Time magazine—to submit information about staff, finances, operations and real estate in China.
The move heightens tensions between the U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest economies, which have been engaged in a trade war over the past two years. The fight recently spilled into the media sphere as the two countries forced the departure of journalists or staff from each others’ media outlets.
The U.S. National Security Council, in a pair of tweets on Tuesday, criticized China’s latest action. “The Chinese Communist Party’s decision to expel journalists from China and Hong Kong is yet another step toward depriving the Chinese people and the world of access to true information about China,” the NSC wrote. In another tweet, the White House called on China to instead focus on helping the world combat coronavirus, which the NSC pointedly described as the “Wuhan coronavirus.”
On March 2, the Trump administration announced a personnel cap on four state-run Chinese media outlets—Xinhua News Agency, China Radio International, China Global Television Network and China Daily—forcing them to reduce their Chinese employees in the U.S. to 100 in total, from 160.
That move came shortly after China expelled three Journal reporters over a headline on an Opinion column.
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