For foreign journalists in the Chinese capital, the end of the year brings the usual swirl of holiday parties, talk of escaping the bracing cold for the warmer climes of Southeast Asia and one inevitable question: Did you get your new visa yet?<\/p>\n
By Andrew Jacobs
December 17, 2014 5:00 pm<\/p>\n
For foreign journalists in the Chinese capital, the end of the year brings the usual swirl of holiday parties, talk of escaping the bracing cold for the warmer climes of Southeast Asia and one inevitable question: Did you get your new visa yet?<\/p>\n
The good news is that unlike last year \u2014 when the Chinese government delayed the issuance of some journalist visas, prompting the intervention<\/a> of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. during a state visit \u2014 the authorities appear to be renewing hundreds of annual resident journalist visas without a hitch. That includes reporters from The New York Times and Bloomberg News, two media outlets that last year were targeted for their investigative coverage<\/a> of the wealth of the families of China\u2019s top leaders.<\/p>\n But the progress on visa renewals obscures what many correspondents say is a mounting hostility toward Western media outlets operating in China. The government continues to block the websites of The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and The Times, and a number of Times reporters have been forced to leave mainland China after the government declined to process their visa applications.<\/p>\n Many foreign correspondents say it is increasingly difficult to carry out their work here. Tibet remains off limits, and the volatile western region of Xinjiang has effectively become a no-go zone, with police harassment making it nearly impossible to investigate the bloody clashes between ethnic Uighurs and Chinese security forces that claimed hundreds of lives in 2014.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, the Foreign Correspondents\u2019 Club of China<\/a> published a harrowing catalog of recent incidents that suggest a creeping intolerance for photographers, reporters and video crews working in places that are officially open to foreign journalists.<\/p>\n In recent months, more than a dozen correspondents have been roughed up, detained or shadowed by plainclothes police officers as they tried to work in far-flung provinces as well as the heart of the nation\u2019s capital. In October, one wire service reporter said he was manhandled, chained to a metal chair and held for more than 14 hours after he attempted to conduct interviews at the main petition office in Beijing. The reporter refused to strip down for a physical exam but was forced to submit to a drug test and then falsely accused of injuring one of his interrogators. As retribution, the Foreign Ministry issued him a six-month press card, not the one-year card that is usually pro forma.<\/p>\n Many of those who reported harassment to the Foreign Correspondents\u2019 Club requested that their names, and in some cases the names of their employers, be withheld for fear of angering the authorities.<\/p>\n In interviews, several of those who have experienced harassment said it was disproportionate to the sensitivities of the subject at hand. In August, an Associated Press camera crew covering the opening \u2014 and subsequent closing<\/a> \u2014 of an underground film festival in Beijing was attacked by a crowd of thugs who damaged their equipment, splashed them with water and snatched one of the correspondents\u2019 phones. \u2018\u2018We were completely shocked because you don\u2019t expect that kind of reaction covering a small film festival,\u2019\u2019 said one reporter, adding that the police just stood by as the violence unfolded.<\/p>\n In many ways, the growing intolerance of foreign journalists mirrors the hostility experienced by civil society groups, liberal academics and rights defenders under the two-year-old administration of President Xi Jinping. In internal speeches and editorials published in the state-owned news media, the Communist Party has characterized Western reporters as \u2018\u2018hostile foreign forces\u2019\u2019<\/a> seeking to subvert single-party rule.<\/p>\n \u2018\u2018Western anti-China forces led by the United States have joined in one after the other, and colluded with dissidents within the country to make slanderous attacks on us in the name of so-called press freedom and constitutional democracy,\u2019\u2019 one propaganda official in Jiangsu Province wrote last year in a party-run journal.<\/p>\n Peter Ford, president of the Foreign Correspondents\u2019 Club, said that many reporters increasingly find themselves stonewalled by local officials, some of whom acknowledge that they have been instructed not to speak to the foreign media. \u2018\u2018It does seem to reflect a general sense of official mistrust of outsiders,\u2019\u2019 said Mr. Ford, who is the Beijing bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor.<\/p>\n The Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment on Wednesday.<\/p>\n