Extensive printing work on Swedish media from China

SVT News has sent a survey to Sweden's eight largest news editions asking if they have been contacted by the Chinese Embassy regarding criticism of the editorial journalism and whether they have been exposed to influence attempts. Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen, Sveriges Radio and Sveriges Television all say that, over the past two years, they have been repeatedly contacted by the Chinese Embassy via letters and emails, including criticism of publications.

Svenska Dagbladet has been contacted on a handful of occasions over the past two years by mail, among other things, by China's Swedish Ambassador. On several occasions, China and its ambassador have criticized the newspaper's publication of articles on various conditions in the country. Individual reporters have also been criticized.

The Expressen newspaper has received a number of letters and e-mails from the embassy with criticism and threatening wording regarding Expressen's monitoring of, among other things, the Swedish book publisher Gui Minhai, who has been imprisoned in China since 2015. The letters contain wordings about, among other things, Swedish "mediatyranni".

Several of the editors experience the contacts as pressure attempts. In addition, China's ambassador has invited a number of reporters at, among others, Aftonbladet, Sveriges Television and Svenska Dagbladet for personal meetings and lunches where comments were made on the journalistic coverage.

At the end of November, Swedish Radio noted that the Chinese Embassy on its website in the past year published 74 critical so-called remarks against Swedish politicians and scientific reports, but mainly against Swedish media. The comments mainly concern publications that contained some form of criticism of China.

Two of the eight editors surveyed did not respond to the questionnaire. One of the editors who replied writes that they do not know any contacts from China's ambassador; it is Sydsvenska Dagbladet. However, the magazine was recently contacted by the Hungarian ambassador who had views on a chronicle of one of the newspaper's columnists.