[ad_1]
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Wednesday (October 21) that the State Department was designating the US operations of six more China-based media companies as foreign missions, a move that, according to he said, it was aimed at rolling back communist propaganda.
Pompeo also told a State Department press conference that the United States will begin a dialogue on China with the European Union on Friday and that on Sunday it will begin a trip to India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia.
He said he hoped the meetings would include discussions on how “free nations can work together to thwart the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
The State Department named the newly designated publications as Yicai Global, Jiefang Daily, Xinmin Evening News, Social Sciences in China Press, Beijing Review and Economic Daily. It brought to 15 the number of designated Chinese media outlets this year.
It was the latest step by the United States to curb Chinese activity in the United States in the run-up to the November 3 presidential election, in which President Donald Trump has made a tough rapprochement with China a key foreign policy issue.
Pompeo said the move was part of efforts to roll back “Chinese Communist propaganda efforts” in the United States.
“They are also substantially owned or effectively controlled by a foreign government,” he said.
“We are not imposing restrictions on what these outlets can publish in the United States; we simply want to make sure that Americans, the consumers of information, can differentiate between news written by a free press and propaganda distributed by the Chinese Communist Party itself. No the same thing.”
The State Department has previously required Chinese media outlets to register as foreign missions and announced in March that it was reducing the number of journalists authorized to work in the US offices of major Chinese media outlets from 160 to 100.
In response, China expelled a dozen US correspondents from the New York Times, News Corp’s Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
The United States also said last month that it would require high-level Chinese diplomats to obtain State Department approval before visiting US university campuses or holding cultural events with more than 50 people outside of mission grounds.
The Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Washington designated four major Chinese media outlets as foreign embassies in June and five in February. The designation requires the media to report to the US Department of State about their personnel and real estate lists.
