Chinese State Media welcome Trump to cut America’s voice

The Chinese State Media welcomed the course of Donald Trump to reduce public funding for news publications America and Radio Free Asia, which have long been reporting authoritarian regimes.

Dissolution affects thousands of employees – some 1300 employees have been put on paid leave at Voice of America (Voa) Alone from the executive order on Friday.

Critics called the failure of democracy, but Beijing’s State Global Times denied VOA about its “horrifying experience” in reporting China and said “has now been thrown out of its own government as a dirty rag.”

The White House defended this move, stating that “it would guarantee that taxpayers were no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”

Trump’s abbreviations are aimed at the US Global Media Agency (USAGM), which is supported by Congress and financed the affected news editions such as Voa, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe.

They have gained recognition and international recognition for their reporting in places where print freedom is very limited or non -existent, from China and Cambodia to Russia and North Korea.

Although authorities in some of these countries are blocking the shows – Voa, for example, they are banned in China – people can listen to them on short -wave radio or bypass restrictions via VPN.

RFA often reports the repression of human rights in Cambodia, whose former authoritarian ruler Hun Saint welcomes the cuts as “a major contribution to the elimination of fake news.”

It was also among the first news to be reporting on the Chinese detention network of detention centers in Sindzian, where authorities are accused of locking hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Uighur without court. Beijing denies the allegations, saying that people are willing to visit “education camps” who fight “terrorism and religious extremism.” The VOA report on the North Korean defects and the alleged concealment of casualties of the casual victims of the Chinese Communist Party won awards.

Voa, mainly a radio output, which also broadcasts in Mandarin, was recognized last year as its rare protest in 2022 in China against Covid Lockdowns.

But in China, Global Times welcomes the cuts, calling Voa a “lies factory.”

“As more and more Americans are beginning to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and multidimensional China, the demonizing stories spread by VOA will eventually turn into a laugh,” said Monday.

Hu Sigin, who was the former editor -in -chief of Global Times, writes: “The voice of America is paralyzed! And so there is a free Asia radio that was so vicious for China. It’s so great news.”

Similar answers “would be easy to predict,” said Valdi Baraputri, a Voa journalist, who lost his job over the weekend. She was previously appointed to the BBC World Service.

“Eliminating VOA, of course, allows channels that are opposite to the right and balanced reporting to thrive,” she told the BBC.

The National Press Club, a leading representative group for American journalists, said the order “undermines America’s long -standing commitment to free and independent press”.

Founded during World War II, partly to combat Nazi propaganda, Voa reaches about 360 million people a week in nearly 50 languages. Over the years, it has broadcast in China, North Korea, the Communist Cuba and the former Soviet Union. It is also a useful tool for many Chinese to learn English.

VOA Director Michael Abramovitz said Trump’s order had accumulated Voa, while “opponents of America, such as Iran, China and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars in creating false stories to discredit the United States.”

D -Ja Baraputuri, which is from Indonesia but based in Washington, first joined VOA in 2018, but its visa was terminated at the end of Trump’s first administration.

She joined again in 2023 because she wanted to be part of an organization that “maintains impartial, factual reporting, which is free from the influence of the government.”

The recent redundancies left her “a sense of the idea I had for the freedom of the press (in the United States).”

She is also concerned about colleagues who can now be forced to return to hostile homes where they can be persecuted for their journalism.

In the meantime The Czech Republic appeals to the European Union To intervene so that the free Europe can maintain radio. It reports in 27 languages ​​from 23 countries, reaching over 47 million people each week.

The RFA Bay Fang CEO said in a statement that the organization plans to challenge the order. Reducing the financing of these retail outlets is a “Dictators and Despot Award, including the Chinese Communist Party, which would not want anything better than their impact is not checked in the information space,” he said.

RFA started in 1996 and reaches nearly 60 million people a week in China, Myanmar, North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. In China, it also broadcasts in minority languages ​​such as Tibetan and Uighur, except English and Mandarin.

“(Trump’s order) not only invalidates nearly 60 million people who turn to RFA reporting a week to learn the truth, but it is also beneficial for America’s opponents at our expense,” said G -N Fang.

While Chinese state media have noted the cuts, it is difficult to understand how the Chinese feel about it, given that the Internet is highly censored.

Outside China, those who have listened to Voa and RFA over the years seem to be disappointed and worried.

“Looking back to history, countless exiles, rebels, intellectuals and ordinary people have been preserved in the dark because of the voices of Voa and RFA and have seen hope in fear for their reports,” writes Du Ven, a Chinese dissident in Belgium, writes X.

“If the free world decides to remain silent, then the dictator’s voice will become the only echo in the world.”