Beijing (AFP)

The situation of foreign media in China has "deteriorated considerably" in 2020, deplores Monday a professional association, with 18 expulsions, multiple pressures, few visas issued and restrictions on behalf of the Covid.

"For the third consecutive year, not a single correspondent has declared that his working conditions have improved," notes the Club of Foreign Correspondents in China (FCCC) in its annual report.

China expelled at least 18 foreign journalists working for the American dailies New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post in 2020.

A retaliatory measure against the United States, which had forced several dozen Chinese correspondents to leave American soil last year.

It is "the biggest expulsion of foreign journalists since the days of the Tiananmen massacre more than 30 years ago," according to the Club.

Still in retaliation, China no longer issues American media correspondents with press cards - essential for working.

The Chinese authorities, when they are unhappy with the media coverage of a journalist, also continued in 2020 to apply punitive measures.

The press cards of at least 13 correspondents have thus been reduced to six months or less - compared to one year normally.

Among the media concerned: the New York Times, the BBC, the Globe and Mail, Le Monde or the Voice of America.

Another type of pressure: that against Chinese employees of international media.

It has been "increasing" over the past year, with threats of non-renewal of work permits.

A total of 59% of those polled said that their Chinese colleagues had been bullied in 2020 - a marked increase compared to 2019 (44%).

Extreme case: Haze Fan, a Chinese employee of the Bloomberg News agency, has been in detention since December on suspicion of "threat to national security".

The coronavirus, which appeared in the country at the end of 2019, has not helped matters.

"China has used the pandemic as a new means of controlling journalists," accuses the FCCC.

The report mentions correspondents reporting, threatened with being placed in quarantine or forced to undergo multiple screening tests.

And the authorities only issued a very small number of visas to journalists wishing to come or return to China in 2020, while other professions are not subject to such restrictions.

It is possible to go to Xinjiang (northwest), where Beijing is accused of mass internment of Muslim Uyghurs, but journalists there are subject to "particularly intense" harassment, accuses the FCCC.

Correspondents there were followed by police, forced to erase data from their devices and prevented from talking to people or sleeping in hotels, the report said.

The study was carried out in December 2020 and January 2021. Of the 220 journalists who are members of the FCCC, a total of 150 responded - or about a third of foreign correspondents in China.

Asked during a press briefing, Chinese diplomacy spokesman Wang Wenbin described the report as "presumptuous, alarmist and without any factual basis."

As for the FCCC, it is an organization that Beijing "has never recognized", he recalled.

While assuring that the country is happy to welcome "journalists from all over the world", he explained that his government "opposes the ideological prejudices that target China, disinformation under the pretext of so-called freedom of the press and behavior that violates journalistic ethics ".

© 2021 AFP