Trump Says He May Respond to China’s Expulsion of Reporters
Trump Says He May Respond to China’s Expulsion of Reporters
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said he’s considering an official response to China’s expulsion of three Wall Street Journal reporters from its country.
“I haven’t really been given a full briefing on that. We’re going to look at it,” Trump said during a news conference in New Delhi, where he’s concluding a two-day trip.
China kicked out three Wall Street Journal reporters last week after it said the Journal refused to apologize for a “racially discriminatory” op-ed, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Wednesday. The column described China as the “sick man of Asia.” Foreign journalists need press passes issued by the foreign ministry to qualify for visas to report in the country.
The U.S. is weighing whether to expel Chinese journalists in response, according to U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations. There’s an intense debate within the administration over how severely to respond to the expulsions last week. Some advocate ordering dozens -- and perhaps hundreds -- of Chinese reporters to leave, while others say that’s not legally possible or in keeping with American values on freedom of the press, according to several of the officials.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” Trump said of China’s expulsion of the journalists. “We give very good access” to Chinese journalists, he said. “We’ll have a decision made on that relatively soon.”
While declining to comment on specific actions under consideration, John Ullyot, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Friday that China’s move against the American reporters was an “egregious act.”
Chinese outlets, almost all of them controlled by the government, have more than 500 reporters in the U.S., some administration officials believe. There are so many that the U.S. doesn’t track them all. By contrast, China currently lets about 75 American journalists live and work there and routinely uses expulsions and visa denials to punish U.S. outlets for what the government regards as unfair coverage.
To contact the reporters on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net;Jordan Fabian in Washington at jfabian6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu
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