China has expelled a Wall Street Journal reporter for hostile coverage of sensitive issues in the Communist country.
Chun Han Wong, a Singaporean national who used to work as WSJ’s Beijing correspondent since 2014, has been effectively expelled after the Chinese authorities refused to renew his press credentials, according to media reports.
Wong’s crime is that he co-wrote an investigative report on the role of one of the cousins of Chinese President Xi Jinpin in money laundering, organized crimes and other activities. The report also talks about how his political clout helps him get away with the crimes.
On the expulsion of the journalist, China’s Foreign Ministry stated that foreign journalists who write “malicious smears and attacks against China’ are not welcome in the country.
China’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club issued a statement condemning the Chinese action. In a statement, the Club stated: “Expulsions of journalists from China amount to an extreme attempt by Chinese authorities to punish news organisations that conduct factual work that does not cast the country or its leadership in a flattering light. Foreign correspondents are not propaganda workers, and should not be treated as such.”
Wong is the latest on the list of journalists who were denied visas by China. According to The Guardian, Buzzfeed’s China bureau chief, Megha Rajagopalan, who has reported from the country for six years, announced on Twitter last week that the Chinese government had refused to renew her journalist visa. Rajagopalan had reported extensively on abuses in the Muslim minority region of Xinjiang.
In 2015, French reporter Ursula Gauthier and US journalist Melissa Chan in 2012 were denied visas. The US journalists Paul Mooney and Austin Ramzy were also denied visas to work in China.
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