After 40 years of coverage from China, Radio-Canada is forced to close its office in Beijing, for lack of an agreement with the Chinese authorities.
Posted at 11:46 a.m.
Luce Julien, Director General of Information at Radio-Canada, and Ginette Viens, Senior Director, Programming, News, Current Affairs and Deployment at Radio-Canada made the announcement Wednesday on the Crown corporation’s website.
” Unfortunately, since the appointment of our new correspondent in Asia, Philippe Leblanc, and his visa application in October 2020, all our attempts for him to be able to settle (in Beijing) have been unsuccessful”, can we read on the Radio Canada website.
“Meetings with the consul of Montreal and subsequent steps ended without success. Only our presence during the Olympic Games last winter in Beijing was allowed to us. And this, within a very strict framework. »
We also learned that CBC and Radio-Canada chief information officers Brodie Fenlon and Luce Julien have written to the Chinese ambassador to Canada, Cong Peiwu, to once again ask for a visa to Philip Leblanc. “We expressed to him all the historical importance of our respective countries and the impossibility of continuing to maintain an office like this if we cannot be there. We have since received a simple acknowledgment of receipt. »
Radio-Canada has therefore decided to install Philippe Leblanc in Taiwan for the next two years, so that he can cover the news of this vast region.
“Like our CBC colleagues, we hope that one day China will once again open up to our journalists, just as we hope that the Russian authorities will be open to relocate us to Moscow,” indicate Luce Julien and Ginette Viens.
Note that in May 2022, the Russian authorities decided to close the Radio-Canada office in Moscow and to revoke the accreditations and visas of the journalistic team, thus expelling them from the territory. Since then, correspondent Tamara Alteresco has been covering what is happening in Russia from a distance and from neighboring countries.
Radio-Canada is studying various possibilities for its Russian coverage, in particular that of opening a temporary bureau in a neighboring country.