Beijing –

Over the past few weeks, China has gone to great lengths to give the impression that it is opening up to the world – whether to foreign businesses, tourists or journalists.

I cannot confirm these claims. I am not an expert on China, but a regional reporter who reports on areas that are often hard to believe, including China.

But my recent brief reporting experience in Beijing revealed the difficulties faced by foreign journalists working in China. This experience runs counter to China’s official narrative of “openness.”

Recently, the Chinese government invited me to cover the country’s biggest annual political events, including the National People’s Congress session that wraps up in Beijing this week.

I didn’t expect to get a visa. Journalists working for the U.S. and many other Western news outlets have been largely locked out since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when U.S.-China tensions heightened and China entered a three-year strict coronavirus lockdown control.

Since 2020, no VOA reporter has been granted a Chinese visa, except for a State Department reporter who was part of the press corps accompanying U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his visit.

By my count, China has issued at least seven short-term journalist visas to U.S. and European media outlets to cover the week-long political gatherings known as the Two Sessions, during which China’s political elite expressed concern about China’s plight. A consistent message of optimism. economy.

mixed message

It doesn’t take an expert to see that China faces a long list of problems. Even after COVID-19 lockdowns were lifted early last year, China’s economy is growing at its slowest pace in decades. Foreign investment has fallen sharply amid geopolitical tensions and a series of high-profile detentions of Chinese and foreign businessmen. Fewer tourists are coming to China than before the pandemic.

At two meetings, China downplayed the challenges and set an ambitious economic growth target of about 5% this year. But while authorities have pledged to reduce barriers to travel and foreign trade, they have also tightened Communist Party control over the government and expanded national security laws that many foreign critics consider vague.

As a journalist, I too feel the inconsistency of information. Although China restored pre-epidemic media access levels during the two sessions, it canceled the prime minister’s regular press conference at the end of the session. Many journalists were ambivalent about the cancellation; while it was clear that the questions at this press conference were typically pre-selected, it was still a rare opportunity for journalists to engage with China’s senior leaders.

News restrictions

Most of my challenges as a journalist began when I left Tiananmen Square, where political meetings were held, and visited other parts of Beijing. Security police presence has been increased across the capital region for much of the month, as is common at sensitive political moments.

But I didn’t think omnipresent police patrols would prevent me from performing basic journalistic tasks, such as obtaining footage of major tourist areas and conducting short impromptu interviews with local residents.

My interview questions were innocuous. What do the Chinese people think of the upcoming US presidential election? Do they prefer Donald Trump or Joe Biden? Do they have hope for improvement in U.S.-China relations?

These questions prompted a series of thoughtful responses, which you can see in the video below.

I didn’t have any trouble until I got back to the hotel that evening, when I received a call asking me to immediately go to the local office of the Ministry of Public Security, China’s main national police agency that also monitors domestic political threats. .

Upon arrival, I was escorted through a nondescript hall to a small conference room, where I met several officers who began the interrogation.

Why, officials demanded to know, was I asking people about Trump and Biden instead of writing about the two meetings for which I had media credentials? I replied that the focus of my report this time was China’s policies, including its foreign relations.

They wanted to know, why didn’t I get permission before filming? I told them that not only was I in a public place, but I would not film any interviews without the interviewee’s permission.

Their final question took the form of a rebuke: Why doesn’t VOA tell China’s side of the story more fairly? Apparently, officials did not realize the irony in my interviews with residents that the primary purpose of the article was to provide a Chinese perspective.

pattern of abuse

Finally, with only a mild scolding, I was allowed to leave. Other journalists based in China have regularly suffered worse abuse, even counting only recent incidents.

A week before I arrived in China, a Dutch journalist was pushed to the ground and his equipment confiscated by police while covering a bank protest in central Chengdu. The police detained him and his photographer for several hours, and Stop them from making phone calls.

This week, an Associated Press reporter said he and a colleague were followed by plainclothes police, at one point following him into a bathroom. An Associated Press reporter in Chengdu interviewed an elderly retiree who invested in a bankrupt trust fund.

“A dozen plainclothes men followed us, using tactics I had only seen in Xinjiang. They followed me into the bathroom and then to the airport. They took pictures of us,” journalist Kang Dake said on the social media site X. This is Chengdu, one of the most liberal cities in China. It’s shocking to see such tactics being used here.”

Foreign journalists often face harassment when visiting remote areas of China such as Tibet or Xinjiang, where China has been accused of serious human rights abuses, or when reporting on other politically sensitive topics such as protests or natural disasters.

But if my experience and that of many others is any indication, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for foreign journalists to cover even the most uncontroversial stories in China’s largest cities.

Even China’s state-controlled journalists face increasing restrictions. Just this week, authorities in the city of Sanhe, 50 kilometers from Beijing, harassed reporters from state media CCTV while they were broadcasting live near the site of a deadly gas explosion.

The incident sparked a public outcry and even attracted the attention of the Communist Party-affiliated Journalists Association.

“This incident is a wake-up call for China’s more professional news media, which for decades have attempted to report truthfully in the face of formal press restrictions from the Chinese Communist Party leadership and frequent intimidation from below,” David Ban Zhiyuan wrote in comments published by China Media Plan.

“Such obstructive behavior is not an exception but the essence of China’s media policy,” he added.

Open to the world?

So what does all this have to do with China’s official narrative of opening up to the world?

I obviously can’t speak to how all foreign investors feel about returning to China. But I have spoken to colleagues in business and academia who are no longer willing to travel to the country, citing concerns about arbitrary detention.

I can’t speak for foreign tourists either. But I can tell you, as a new immigrant, how difficult it is to complete even the simplest tasks, such as booking a cab, paying for a meal with a foreign bank account, and checking Facebook, Instagram, or pretty much any other Western social media app, Because China’s economic situation is very bad. Insists on a digital firewall between its people and the rest of the world.

I can safely say that I was welcomed by Beijing residents who seemed eager to interact with VOA, despite a state-backed campaign to paint foreign journalists as potential spies and dangerous troublemakers.

But at last week’s meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the assembled media that the Chinese government was “opening the door more and more” to the world. He once insisted that “more foreign friends are welcome to join us” in telling China’s story.

From my perspective, it certainly doesn’t feel that way.