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BEIJING: The BBC was attacked by Chinese official and social media on Friday (February 5) in an escalating diplomatic dispute, a day after Britain’s media regulator revoked the Chinese state media’s television license CGTN.
Britain and China have been exchanging criticism for months about China’s crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong, concerns about the security of Huawei’s technology and the treatment of ethnic Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang region.
Britain’s Ofcom on Thursday revoked the license of CGTN, the English-language sister channel of state broadcaster CCTV, after concluding that the ruling Communist Party of China had ultimate editorial responsibility for the channel.
Minutes later, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement accusing the BBC of promoting “fake news” in its report on COVID-19, demanding an apology and saying that the station had politicized the pandemic and “repeated the theories on China’s cover-up. “
The BBC said its reports are fair and impartial.
On Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin criticized Ofcom’s ruling for “politicizing the issue on a technical point” and warned that China reserves the right to give a “necessary response.”
READ: UK broadcast regulator revokes license from China’s CGTN
Separately on Thursday, the British newspaper Telegraph reported that Britain had last year expelled three Chinese spies who were there on journalism visas.
In recent weeks, China’s state media has stepped up attacks on what it calls biased reporting by the British public broadcaster on topics ranging from the coronavirus to Xinjiang to the former British colony of Hong Kong.
“I suspect that the BBC has been closely instigated by the intelligence agencies of the United States and the United Kingdom. It has become a bastion of Western public opinion’s war against China,” said Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Party. Communist. tabloid endorsed by the Global Times said on Twitter.
The Foreign Ministry’s criticism of the BBC was among the top trends on China’s social media platform Weibo on Friday.
“The BBC will not turn into a bad-mouth broadcasting corporation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Twitter.
BBC broadcasts, like those of most major Western media outlets, are blocked in China.
Some people called for the BBC to be expelled in response to the revocation of CGTN’s license.
“The BBC has long been stationed in Beijing, but it has always been ideologically biased and broadcast fake news from its platform, deliberately smearing China. After so many years, it is time for us to act,” said a Weibo user.
The BBC’s coverage of Xinjiang came under fire after it reported on Wednesday that women in internment camps for ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in the region were subjected to rape and torture.
China’s Foreign Ministry said the report did not have a factual basis. The Global Times said in an editorial on Friday that the BBC had “gravely violated journalistic ethics.”
