12 September, 2014 (04:00)
September 2014
Executive summary
China’s ruling Communist Party continues to erect hurdles to foreign journalists, and the media companies that employ them, discouraging reporting on many aspects of China. Foreign journalists are restricted in where they can travel. Their sources are vulnerable to intimidation or worse. If they or their co-workers write stories that displease the Chinese government, they face retribution. This could come in the form of threats, effective expulsion (visas not being renewed), retribution against news assistants and reprisals against a journalist’s media company that has business interests in China. In an FCCC survey this year of China-based foreign correspondents, 80％of those surveyed thought that their work conditions had worsened or stayed the same compared to 2013. The FCCC believes that China is rapidly eroding the progress it made in “opening up” to the world prior to the 2008 Olympics.
About the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC)
The FCCC has 243 correspondent members from 31 countries. It was founded in 1981 and its objectives are to promote friendship and professional exchange among foreign correspondents stationed in China, to promote professionalism in journalism and to defend the ideals of freedom of the press and the free exchange of information.
Introduction
In the years since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, there has been a notable increase in threats and use of violence against foreign journalists, their staff, and their sources; China’s restrictive and punitive visa practices have severely hampered global news organizations’ coverage of China. In 2014, China is further away from making good on its pre-Olympic pledges to uphold a “policy of opening up to the outside world” and to protect the lawful rights of foreign journalists.