The Chinese government has rejected the visa application of a veteran US journalist who had been waiting eight months to begin a new reporting job in China for Thomson Reuters, the company said.
The reporter, Paul Mooney, said the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Reuters on Friday that it would not grant him a resident journalist visa, but declined to provide a reason. Mooney returned to the US last year after the expiration of his previous visa, which was sponsored by the South China Morning Post, a newspaper based in Hong Kong.
The rejection comes at a time of rising tensions between foreign news organizations and the government, which has been using its economic clout, the issuance of visas and Internet controls to express displeasure with coverage it deems unflattering.
“China has been my career,” Mooney, who has spent three decades covering Asia, the past 18 years based in Beijing, said on Saturday in a telephone interview. “I never thought it was going to end this way. I’m sad and disappointed.”
The Web sites for Bloomberg News and the New York Times have been blocked in China for more than a year following the publication of investigative articles by both news organizations that detailed the wealth accumulated by relatives of top Chinese leaders. Since then, employees for both Bloomberg and the Times have been awaiting residency visas that would allow them to report from China.
Such tactics appear to have had an impact. On Saturday, the Times detailed a decision late last month by Bloomberg to withhold publication of an investigative report, more than a year in the works, that explored hidden financial ties between one of China’s wealthiest men and the families of senior Chinese leaders. Reporters with the company said the editor-in-chief, Matthew Winkler, defended the decision by comparing it to the self-censorship by foreign news bureaus that sought to remain working inside Nazi Germany. Winkler and a senior editor denied that the articles had been killed and said they would eventually be published.
The Chinese government’s rejection of Mooney’s visa request will certainly add to the anxieties of foreign reporters in China, many of whom complain of cyberattacks, police interference and intimidation, especially during the annual visa renewal process, currently underway, which sometimes involves interviews with foreign ministry officials or public security personnel.
In a statement, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China said: “Such delays and lack of transparency merely add to the impression that the visa process is being used by the authorities to intimidate journalists and media organizations.”
Mooney said he suspected that the government’s decision to deny him a visa was punishment for his persistent coverage of human rights abuses in China.
A glimpse of a possible Picasso in the home of Imelda Marcos filmed during a visit by her son after his presidential election win has set off a flurry of speculation in the Philippines, where the family that once plundered billions is set to return to power. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late dictator, won a landslide victory in Monday’s presidential election, an outcome that has appalled those who survived his father’s regime. Images released by the family showed Marcos Jr visiting the home of his mother, who had displayed Picasso’s Femme Couche VI (Reclining Woman VI),
The images of a besuited Ferdinand Marcos Jr, clad in a top hat and leaning nonchalantly on a Rolls-Royce, dating from his time in Britain in the 1970s, are as you might expect from the playboy scion of a kleptocratic dictator. Yet as the Marcos family returns to power in the Philippines after a landslide presidential victory by Marcos Jr, he is facing calls to stop misrepresenting the circumstances of his studies at the University of Oxford. The university has confirmed that he did not complete his degree in philosophy, politics and economics after enrolling in 1975. “According to our records, he did
HATE CRIME: Officials were investigating a detailed ‘manifesto’ posted online before the livestreamed shooting, in which the suspect outlined his reasoning and plans A heavily armed 18-year-old white man on Saturday shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in a “racially motivated” attack that he livestreamed on camera, authorities said. The gunman, who was wearing body armor and a helmet, was arrested after the massacre, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told a news conference. Gramaglia put the toll at 10 dead and three wounded. Eleven of the victims were African Americans. The gunman shot four people in the parking lot of the Tops supermarket, three of them fatally, then went inside and continued firing, Gramaglia said. Among those killed inside the store was
CALIBRATED RESPONSE: The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants to assess the situation and the risks, the transport minister said Singapore will strive to keep its borders open and stay connected to the rest of world even if a new variant of COVID-19 emerges, Singaporean Minister for Transport S. Iswaran said on Wednesday. The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants, Iswaran said in an interview with Bloomberg News. When the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 hit, Singapore did not backtrack on its reopening plans, but rather decided to wait and see how things panned out, he said, adding that the response was different versus the Delta outbreak. “We’ve all learned to adapt,” Iswaran said on the sidelines