BEIJING (AP) – China has banned the BBC World News television channel in a diplomatic struggle with Britain after British regulators revoked the license of Chinese state broadcaster CGTN.
The change on Thursday night was largely symbolic, because BBC World was already limited to showing on cable TV systems in hotels and apartments for foreigners and some other businesses.
The National Radio and Television Administration said that BBC World News coverage in China violated the requirement that the news be truthful and impartial and undermined China’s national interests and ethnic solidarity.
The Chinese government criticized the BBC’s reports on the COVID-19 pandemic in China and allegations of forced labor and sexual abuse in the Xinjiang region, where Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups live.
“The channel does not meet the requirements to broadcast in China as a foreign channel,” said the Radio and Television Administration in a statement dated midnight on Friday.
He gave no indication as to whether BBC reporters in China would be affected.
Beijing’s communist government last year expelled foreign reporters from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times during disputes with the Trump administration.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, in a written statement, called the measure “an unacceptable restriction on media freedom” that “would only damage China’s reputation in the eyes of the world”.
In Hong Kong, government broadcaster RTHK said it would stop broadcasting BBC World broadcasts on Friday. He quoted the order of the chief regulator.
Britain’s communications watchdog, Ofcom, revoked its license from CGTN, China’s English satellite news channel, on February 4. He cited links to the Communist Party of China among the reasons.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China said that Ofcom acted “for political reasons based on ideological prejudices”.
The loss of its British broadcasting license was a setback for CGTN, which is part of the Communist Party’s efforts to promote its views abroad. CGTN has a European operations hub in West London.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price found it worrying that media operations were restricted within China, while “Beijing’s leaders use open and free media environments abroad to promote disinformation”.
Price asked the Chinese government to allow its people free access to the media and the internet.
“Freedom of the media is an important right and is the key to guaranteeing informed citizenship, informed citizenship that can share its ideas freely with each other and with its leaders,” said Price.