Foreign journalists are facing state-sponsored interference while reporting in China, despite Olympic-related rules aimed at allowing greater press freedoms, an international media organization said yesterday.
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China said it welcomed rules that went into effect a year ago yesterday, but had recorded more than 180 incidences of journalists' work being interfered with last year.
"While the year-old regulations have improved overall reporting conditions for foreign journalists, we are particularly troubled by repeated violations in several areas," club president Melinda Liu (
She cited areas in Beijing and China's northern Hebei Province "where plainclothes thugs have intimidated or physically assaulted foreign journalists" and demanded that such incidents be investigated.
In one case, three reporters were assaulted in two separate incidents while investigating a makeshift prison in suburban Beijing where petitioners who had come to the capital to air their grievances were allegedly being illegally detained.
Journalists working in Tibet and China's westernmost Xinjiang region also said they were followed or detained, or their sources were intimidated, the group said.
Other journalists were being routinely detained, roughed up and questioned while investigating social unrest or local disturbances, it said.
The new rules were meant to allow foreign reporters freedom to conduct interviews with consenting Chinese parties, rather than having to first seek government permission.
Under the new rules, journalists are also to be allowed to report outside the city for which they are accredited, rather than having to seek permission from city authorities.
The rules are set to expire at the end of the Olympic period in October, but a top media official last week said that they may be extended indefinitely.
China's media are tightly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, which routinely censors news deemed to be negative in content or news that shines a bad light on the country's one-party political rule.
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
Taiwanese exports to the US are to be subject to a 20 percent tariff starting on Thursday next week, according to an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump yesterday. The 20 percent levy was the same as the tariffs imposed on Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by Trump. It was higher than the tariffs imposed on Japan, South Korea and the EU (15 percent), as well as those on the Philippines (19 percent). A Taiwan official with knowledge of the matter said it is a "phased" tariff rate, and negotiations would continue. "Once negotiations conclude, Taiwan will obtain a better
RSS