US imposes fresh visa restrictions on Chinese journalists as media once again finds itself a target

The United States has tightened visa rules for Chinese journalists as the tit-for-tat war on the media between the two sides escalated.

The rules, which will take effect on Monday, limit visas for Chinese passport holders to 90 days with the option for an extension, the US Department for Homeland Security said on Friday.

Journalists with passports from Hong Kong or Macau will not be affected.

“The department is issuing this rule to address the actions of the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government and to enhance reciprocity in the treatment of US journalists in the PRC,” the DHS said.

“Information received from the Department of State, as well as open source information, demonstrates a suppression of independent journalism in the PRC, including an increasing lack of transparency and consistency in the admission periods granted to foreign journalists, including US journalists,” it said.

As China-US relations continue to sour, Beijing says expulsion of American reporters may just be the start

Both governments have imposed tighter restrictions on journalists and media organisations this year.

In February, the Trump administration labelled five Chinese state media outlets as “foreign missions” and later that month the number of Chinese nationals they were allowed to employ in the US was cut from 160 to 100.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the move was a retaliation for Beijing’s “increasingly harsh surveillance, harassment and intimidation” of American journalists.

In March, the Chinese authorities announced they were revoking the press credentials for American journalists from three newspapers, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. They were also told they would not be allowed to work in Hong Kong or Macau.

The previous month three Wall Street Journal reporters were expelled from China following an opinion piece criticising the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which China denounced as racist.

China threatens further action against Wall Street Journal a day after kicking out three reporters

“There are no winners in the use of journalists as diplomatic pawns by the world’s two pre-eminent economic powers,” the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) of China said after the expulsions.

According to the FCC Report on Media Freedoms in 2019, China has forced out nine foreign journalists since 2013, either through expulsion or by non-renewal of visas.

On Friday Chris Buckley, a veteran Beijing correspondent for The New York Times, became the latest foreign journalist to be forced to leave China after his visa was not renewed.

The Australian recently spent 76 days inside Wuhan reporting on the coronavirus lockdown.

“Goodbye China – for now. My time here is ending after 24 years. I am filled with sadness at leaving, and gratitude for family and friends who have made this country my life as well as my work. I look forward to resuming reporting soon, and also to the day when we can return,” he wrote on Twitter.

The US and China have been recently trading accusations over the handling of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Donald Trump and Pompeo have both suggested the coronavirus that causes the disease may have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, while Beijing has denounced the US for making “untruthful and insincere remarks” and “politicising the issue”.