China threatens retaliation for US curbs on ‘propaganda’ outlets

BEIJING: China threatened Tuesday to retaliate against new US restrictions on Chinese state media, escalating tensions between the two superpowers as they crack down on each other´s news outlets.

The US State Department said Monday it was reclassifying four organisations — China Central Television, China News Service, the People´s Daily and the Global Times — as foreign missions rather than media outlets in the United States, adding to five others designated in February. China has already expelled more than a dozen American journalists as part of the row. On Tuesday Beijing decried the latest US move as “bare-faced political suppression of Chinese media” that “further exposes the hypocrisy of the so-called freedom of speech and press which the US likes to flaunt”. “We strongly urge the US to reject this Cold War mindset and ideological bias... otherwise China will have no choice but to make an appropriate response,” said foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a routine briefing. All nine Chinese state-run news organisations will be required to report details of their US-based staff and real estate transactions to the State Department. Their news reporting will not be restricted, officials said. “These four entities are not media outlets; they are propaganda outlets,” David Stilwell, the top US diplomat for East Asia, told reporters.