The US Treatment of Chinese Journalists is a Dangerous Regression

It is in the middle of a tragic global public health crisis that the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has decided to announce that five Chinese media outlets would be required to reduce their total number of staff from 160 to 100.

Although the journalists will not be forced to immediately leave the US, their visas are tied to their employment, so they will have to come back to China. In other words, the US just made the decision to expulse 60 foreign journalists.

What did they do wrong? Did they commit a crime? Did they offend the American nation? Did they threaten US national security? Of course not. They have to leave because they are Chinese citizens working for Chinese media.

With this war against the Chinese media and, as a matter of fact, against 60 Chinese citizens, the US is on the path of a dangerous regression that needs to be condemned and stopped.

Before the announcement concerning the 60 individuals, the United States had made the decision to treat five Chinese media entities as extensions of China’s government, requiring them to comply with rules applying to foreign embassies and consulates.

Such an unfortunate classification introduced a much broader and fundamental issue: a competition for what can be called cognitive security.

The US pretends that Chinese media “subverts” the American system. The objective is clear. There is no need to argue with the content anymore, no need to face its complexities and nuances. By disparaging the medium, the message is neutralized, if not discredited.

The expulsion of journalists, another step of a regressive trajectory, is not an effect of strength but, on the contrary, of a series of weaknesses. It is becoming increasingly clear that 21st century Sinophobia is a function of the West’s own insecurity. Would a cohesive and confident US have expulsed 60 Chinese journalists? It can’t be that the US is afraid of 60 journalists. The US is afraid of its own inadequacies.

Battling a virus which threatens lives, mobilizing so it can avoid a global recession, the international community-but also the enlightened segments of American society-will know what to make of the big regression of Trump’s America that is leading to further isolation.

China will certainly find an appropriate answer to this new situation. Beyond, China will know how to display strategic patience, so strategic wisdom can come back to Washington DC.

David Gosset, Sinologist, is the Founder of the Europe-China Forum.