BEIJING (AP) – China has banned the BBC World News television channel in a diplomatic battle with Britain after British regulators revoked the license of Chinese broadcaster CGTN.
The move at the end of Thursday was largely symbolic, as BBC World was already limited to showing on cable TV systems in hotels and apartment complexes to foreigners and some other businesses.
The National Radio and Television Administration said the BBC World News coverage of China violated the requirements that news coverage be true and impartial and undermined China’s national interests and ethnic solidarity.
The Chinese government has criticized BBC reports of the COVID-19 pandemic in China and allegations of forced labor and sexual abuse in the Xinjiang region, home to the Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups.
“The station does not meet the requirements to broadcast in China as an overseas station,” the radio and television administration said in a statement at midnight Friday.
It gave no indication whether BBC reporters in China would be affected.
The communist government in Beijing last year expelled foreign reporters for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times during disputes with the Trump administration.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called the move in a written statement “an unacceptable curtailment of media freedom” that would “only damage China’s reputation in the eyes of the world”.
In Hong Kong, broadcaster RTHK said it would stop broadcasting BBC World broadcasts on Friday. It quoted the chief regulator’s order.
The UK communications watchdog, Ofcom, revoked the license for CGTN, China’s English-language satellite news channel, on February 4. As reasons for this he cited links to the ruling Communist Party of China.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Ofcom had acted on “political grounds based on ideological bias”.
The loss of its UK broadcasting license was a setback for CGTN, which is part of the ruling Communist Party’s efforts to promote its positions abroad. CGTN has a European operating hub in West London.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said it was disturbing that media activity in China was limited, while “Beijing’s leaders are using free and open media environments abroad to promote misinformation.”
Price called on the Chinese government to give the population free access to the media and the Internet.
“Media freedom is an important right and it is key to ensuring an informed bourgeoisie, an informed bourgeoisie that can freely share their ideas with each other and with their leaders,” said Price.