WASHINGTON — The United States and China announced an agreement on Tuesday to ease restrictions on foreign journalists operating in the two countries, tempering a diplomatic confrontation that led to the expulsion of some American reporters from China during the last year of the Trump administration.
China Daily, a newspaper owned by the Chinese government, first reported the deal. Later, a statement from the State Department confirmed the news.
Under the agreement, made public just a day after President Biden met with President Xi Jinping of China, three news organizations — The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times — will be allowed to send journalists back to China, though it remained unclear whether the specific correspondents expelled last year will be permitted to return to work there.
“We are gratified their correspondents will be able to return to the PRC to continue their important work,” the State Department said in a statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “We welcome this progress but see it simply as initial steps.”
The United States, who had previously limited visas for Chinese journalists at 90 days, will now provide visas for foreign reporters for a year. These visas can be renewed annually. Both countries agreed that journalists will be able to leave the country without fear and return to work.
Journalists working in both countries will need to meet the visa eligibility requirements under both laws.
American officials described the agreement to be the result of months of negotiations that sought to resolve tensions between the superpowers. They are competing for economic power and public relations supremacy around the world.
“We will continue to work toward expanding access and improving conditions for U.S. and other foreign media, and we will continue to advocate for media freedom as a reflection of our democratic values,” the statement from the State Department said.
But it is unclear whether the deal — which White House aides said was not discussed when Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi met in a virtual summit on Monday — fully reverses the expulsion actions that China took against the three newspapers last March, as the coronavirus pandemic was just beginning to spread out of that country.
The issue is whether veteran journalists from the American news organizations that were fired last year can return to their previous beats. This will allow newspapers to draw on their knowledge and sources to continue covering the Chinese government, businesses, and society.
Almar Latour, the publisher of The Journal, said in a statement that “we’re encouraged by the reported direction of these negotiations and continue to believe that independent, accurate reporting from within China serves our readers and serves China itself.”
A spokeswoman for The Times could not immediately comment on the reports of the new agreement concerning journalists. A spokeswoman from The Post declined to comment.
Orville Schell is the director of U.S.-China relations at the Asia Society. He said that the agreement reflects the serious effort by diplomats in both nations to reach a more working relationship.
“They were trying to find some area where they could show some concrete progress,” said Mr. Schell, a former dean of the graduate school of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. “They decided that this was a good one.”
China has for years sought to impose restrictions on American journalists who aggressively covered the government’s activities. Chinese officials reduced the visa lengths for journalists working for American news agencies in an effort to discourage them from writing critical articles about the country, fearing they would be forced out.
Tensions over the issue journalists grew in 2020 when former President Donald J. Trump escalated rhetoric about the Chinese origins of the coronavirus. He also restricted the number of Chinese citizens allowed to work in the United States to support Chinese state-owned media outlets that are widely believed by many to be propaganda outlets.
Two weeks later, China expelled journalists from the three American newspapers. Mr. Trump’s administration retaliated in early May, restricting Chinese journalists to 90-day visas to work in the United States. Chinese journalists had previously been granted yearlong visas that allowed them leave the United States and to return during their stay.
The confrontation over journalists was part of a deteriorating relationship between the United States and China during the Trump administration, which clashed with Beijing over tariffs and other economic issues as well as Mr. Trump’s repeated condemnations of the Chinese government over the Covid-19 outbreak.
After initially saying that China had worked “very hard to contain the coronavirus,” Mr. Trump later repeatedly used the phrase “China virus” to describe its origins.
Biden has also taken a hard stance with China, but has tried to reduce the rhetoric between officials. Officials from the United States said Monday’s virtual summit was intended to ensure that misunderstandings and heated rhetoric do no lead to conflict with China.
Schell, who assisted in the facilitation of conversations between State Department officials, leading journalists, and several months ago to discuss this issue, suggested that Mr. Xi’s willingness for Mr. Schell to accept the new arrangement could indicate that he understands how important the news media are, even in a country such as China.
“They do recognize that to have any kind of an economic relationship you do need to have some sort of journalistic interchange,” he said, adding that such an arrangement between two countries has been seen before.
“During the Cold War, we had just such an understanding with Russia,” Mr. Schell said. “There was an agreement that Russians got the same number here and we got the same number there.”
Source: NY Times
