BEIJING — The recent move by U.S. President Donald Trump to make cuts at Voice of America and other U.S. government-run media may be welcome news for China’s ruling Communist Party.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson refrained from commenting on Trump’s decision Tuesday but took the opportunity to criticize the outlets.
“I do not comment on U.S. domestic policy changes,” Mao Ning said when asked about it. “But as for the media you mentioned, their bad records in reporting on China are not a secret.”
The Trump’s administration put almost the entire staff of Voice of America on leave last weekend and ended grants to Radio Free Asia and other media with similar news programming.
Radio Free Asia has an extensive Chinese-language service and frequently reports on human rights issues, including the detention of activists and repression of ethnic groups in Xinjiang and Tibet. The government refutes allegations of abuse.
Voice of America, also known as VOA, has a Chinese-language website that often publishes stories not covered by Chinese media, which is state-controlled. China ranks 172 out of 180 in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.
The Global Times, a state-owned tabloid, criticized Voice of America at length in an editorial this week.
“The so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag,” it said.
Beyond China, Cambodia’s former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who ruled his country for near four decades as an autocrat, welcomed Trump’s move.
“This is a major contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement, and chaos around the world coming from the propaganda machine that President Trump has stopped funding,” he said Monday in a written statement.
Clayton Weimers, USA executive director of the press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, said that authoritarian regimes are “the biggest winners” from Trump’s gutting of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
“Many of them, like China, are looking forward to filling the gap left by American leadership in media freedom with their own propaganda,” Weimers said.
In Washington, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition with the Chinse Communist Party, said the moves against VOA and other broadcasters would “severely weaken our ability to compete” with China’s ruling party and “ultimately make us less safe.”
The media outlets “provide real reporting to millions living under authoritarian regimes, countering CCP distortion,” and allowing Chinese people to “question the CCP’s propaganda and aggression toward the U.S. and our allies and partners,” Krishnamoorthi said.
___
Wu reported from Bangkok. Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Didi Tang in Washington contributed to this report