By Gabriel Crossley
BEIJING (Reuters) – The BBC was criticized by Chinese officials and social media on Friday in a growing diplomatic dispute, a day after Britain’s media regulator revoked the TV license of the Chinese state-owned media CGTN.
Britain and China have been exchanging barbs for months about China’s crackdown on dissent in the former British colony of Hong Kong, concern about the security of Huawei technology and the treatment of Uighur Muslim Muslims in the Chinese region of Xinjiang .
On Thursday, Ofcom of Great Britain revoked the license of CGTN, the sister channel in English of the state broadcaster CCTV, after concluding that the Communist Party of China had the final editorial responsibility for the channel.
Minutes later, China’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement accusing the British Broadcasting Corp of spreading “fake news” in its COVID-19 report, demanding an apology and saying that the broadcaster politicized the pandemic and “reformulated theories about the cover-up by China “.
The BBC said its reporting was fair and impartial.
On Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin criticized Ofcom’s decision as “politicizing the issue from a technical point” and warned that China reserves the right to provide a “necessary response” .
The British newspaper Telegraph reported separately on Thursday that Britain expelled three Chinese spies who were there on journalism visas last year.
China’s state-run media has increased attacks on the British public broadcaster in recent weeks.
“I suspect that the BBC was closely instigated by the intelligence agencies of the United States and the United Kingdom. It has become a stronghold of the war of Western public opinion against China,” said Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Communist Party. tabloid supported The Global Times, said on Twitter.
Foreign Ministry criticisms of the BBC were among the main trends on the Chinese social media platform Weibo on Friday.
“The BBC will not become the Broad-mouthing Broadcasting Corporation,” said ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Twitter.
BBC broadcasts, like those of most major Western news outlets, are blocked in China.
Some people have asked the BBC to be expelled in response to the revocation of the CGTN license.
“The BBC has been based in Beijing for a long time, but it has always maintained ideological prejudice and broadcast false news from its platform, deliberately defaming China. After so many years, it is past time for us to act,” said a Weibo user.
BBC coverage of Xinjiang came under heavy criticism after it reported on Wednesday that women in internment camps for ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in the region were victims of rape and torture.
China’s Foreign Ministry said the report had no factual basis. The Global Times said in an editorial on Friday that the BBC “seriously violated journalistic ethics”.
(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley; Editing by Tony Munroe, Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie)