Threats of legal action and the lack of staff linked to Covid are among the “unprecedented obstacles” encountered by foreign journalists in China, denounces Monday a professional association in a report.
A total of “99% of responding foreign journalists” to the annual survey conducted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) said their working conditions in the Asian country did not meet international standards.
The Chinese authorities particularly seem to be “encouraging a wave of legal proceedings”, or threats of legal proceedings, against foreign journalists, in response to interviews or reports, with around ten cases recorded in 2021, notes the study. .
These results are based on an online survey completed by 127 of 192 CCFC members.
“The range of risks is changing,” notes David Rennie, director of the British weekly The Economist in Beijing, in the survey.
“The media now face the risk of having their information sanctioned by legal sanctions, civil complaints or investigations in the name of national security, which is even more worrying,” he observes.
In 2020, the communist regime detained two female media workers in the name of national security. An Australian journalist, Cheng Lei, a Chinese television presenter, and Haze Fan, a Chinese editorial assistant for the American agency Bloomberg News.
The progress of their case is not known.
On the ground, the foreign media are increasingly confronted with the feeling that they are enemies of China, underlines the report.
“Regime-backed attacks, particularly online troll campaigns,” complicate their work, according to the club.
In the name of the fight against Covid, Beijing has drastically reduced the number of visas granted to foreign media.
In 2020, President Xi Jinping’s regime expelled 18 US media reporters, most often by simply not renewing their annual work permits when they expired.
Very few have since been able to return to China.
Several major American media are reduced to covering Chinese news from other parts of the world, especially from the rival island of Taiwan.
“Covering China is increasingly done remotely,” observes the FCCC.