Even before the border crisis, in 2015, Hu Xijin, then the editor-in-chief of China’s Global Times, had said that the “Indian media is more nationalistic than us.” With astute knowledge about Chinese politics and society, the Indian correspondents have acted as a counterweight against the country’s media outlets that tend to respond to both governments’ nationalist rhetoric. Kewalramani says that while China’s state media “hasn’t necessarily been objective” considering the country’s media ecosystem, Indian journalists from privately owned outlets have provided nuanced reporting and analysis-including on social media-helping many Indians develop an informed understanding of the world’s second-largest economy. During normal times, China had 14 accredited correspondents in India, according to the Foreign Ministry.įor years, both Indian and Chinese correspondents have provided insights from the ground to hundreds of millions of readers. Meanwhile, Zhao Xu from state-run Xinhua News Agency is now the only Chinese journalist in India-he remains in the country even after his four-year placement ended in November 2021, which the outlet’s bureau chief claimed was due to India not facilitating his successor’s visa. Four Indian journalists-Ananth Krishnan from the Hindu, Sutirtho Patranobis of the Hindustan Times, KJM Varma of the Press Trust of India, and Anshuman Mishra of the state broadcaster Prasar Bharati-were stationed in Beijing before the visa row. Two days later, her Indian counterpart, Arindam Bagchi, said all foreign journalists in India, including Chinese reporters, were working “without any limitations or difficulties” and urged China to “facilitate the continued presence of Indian journalists.”īut China’s latest move now entirely erases India’s press corps from Beijing. “Unless India is to clarify why they did this, it’s just a case of using another label to send a message to Beijing that the relationship isn’t normal.”Ĭhina has labeled India’s actions against its journalists as “unfair and discriminatory,” with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning saying on May 31that her country took “appropriate countermeasures” to safeguard the rights and interests of Chinese media organizations. “China is responding to what India is doing, and framing this as an issue of reciprocity, while the Indian side hasn’t said much,” Manoj Kewalramani, the chairperson of the Indo-Pacific research program at the Takshashila Institution in India, told Foreign Policy. On Monday, Bloomberg reported that China has asked the last Indian journalist, from the Press Trust of India, to leave the country this month, though the Foreign Ministry said the remaining correspondent was “still working and living normally in China.” The Chinese authorities had already revoked the credentials of three Indian correspondents this year after India rejected visa renewals for two of China’s state media journalists. A relationship already fractured by border clashes, India’s ban on Chinese tech, and most recently China renaming places in India that the former claims as its own, have become even more volatile. Over the past few months, India and China revoked the credentials of each other’s journalists in a tit-for-tat measure, leaving almost no reporters on the ground from both sides. The world’s two most populous countries don’t have space for each other’s journalists-at least for now.
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