Foreign journalists working in China face increased harassment

Working as a foreign journalist in China has always been difficult but the situation appears to be getting even worse, according to the latest working conditions survey conducted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC).

Of the respondents to this year’s survey*, 98% said reporting conditions rarely meet international standards, with 29% saying that conditions have deteriorated since 2015.

Reporters say sources are being intimidated, as are their local staff. Among the major challenges they face are growing cases of harassment and obstruction.

A European correspondent said police often ask her assistant why she is willing to help the foreign press with its “anti-China bias”. She has been told that by doing so she is a traitor.

Some point to what they call “an alarming new form of harassment” which involves being called by State Security Bureau to unspecified meetings.

The survey also reveals an increase in the use of force and manhandling by authorities against journalists trying to go about their work.

Some 57% of the correspondents said they personally had been subjected to some form of interference, harassment or violence while attempting to report in China.

Josh Chin, of the Wall Street Journal, told of being “shoved roughly and repeatedly by unidentified men wearing smiley face stickers while trying to cover the trial of lawyer Pu Zhiqiang in Beijing.”

A US broadcaster told how “several secret police” arrived at his apartment and tried to get him to sign a document about following the rules of being a journalist in China, which he had already agreed in order to obtain his visa.

They wouldn’t allow him to photograph the document nor would they allow him to tape the meeting. So he refused to sign and was told it might hurt his visa renewal.

As for sources, they face persistent problems that violate their human rights by denying their freedom of expression. Some 26% of the survey’s respondents said their sources were harassed, detained, questioned or punished.

Associated Press reporter Joe McDonald said: “In the most extreme case, a woman who talked to us about losing money to a P2P lending website was detained by police for a number of days.”

Censorship of foreign media organisations continues, with authorities having blocked internet access in China to The Economist and Time magazine in April 2016 following cover articles about Xi Jinping.

Other media outlets, which were previously blocked, include the Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, Bloomberg, Reuters and New York Times.

People have also become reluctant to talk to foreign journalists because of intimidation, a further denial of press freedom. One FCCC member said: “More people (mostly academics, NGOs) tell you straight up that being interviewed by foreign media is not an option. One NGO specified: ‘out of self-protection.’”

And a US brodcaster said: “Many old sources, particularly scholars, who have long been media-friendly, are now too scared to be interviewed.”

Then there is the controversy over “staged press conferences” in which reporters must submit questions to be approved in advance.

Officials sometimes justify this process on the grounds of screening out irrelevant questions. The survey found that 75% of respondents did not think they should participate in such conferences, which they regard as subject to censorship.

But there was a degree of phlegmatism too. One European broadcaster, although finding the harassment “disturbing”, said: “These are the Chinese rules. We live here and I think we have to get used to them, and try to do our best.”

*Survey invitations were sent to 200 correspondents, and the FCCC received 112 responses.