Beijing: China has banned BBC World News from airing in China. This move comes a week after China threatening to retaliate for the recent revocation of the British broadcasting license for China’s state-owned CGTN. The National Radio and Television Administration made this announcement in a statement dated midnight Friday. It said that BBC World News coverage of China had violated requirements. Its news reporting was not true and impartial and undermined China’s national interests and ethnic solidarity.
The BBC already is generally not viewable in China outside of some hotels, businesses and residential compounds for foreigners. It wasn’t immediately clear if the ban would affect reception in those facilities.
The Chinese government has criticised recent BBC reports on the COVID-19 pandemic in China. BBC’s reporting on allegations of forced labour and sexual abuse in the Xinjiang region has also angered the Chinese government. China’s has also said in the past the BBC’s reporting on the Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups have not been correct.
Also read: UK strips China’s state media channel CGTN of broadcast licence
The channel fails to meet the requirements to broadcast in China as an overseas channel,” the Radio and Television Administration said. It added it would not accept BBC’s broadcast application for the next year.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called the move ‘an unacceptable curtailing of media freedom’ that would ‘only damage China’s reputation in the eyes of the world’.
Britain’s communications watchdog, Ofcom had revoked the license for CGTN, China’s English-language satellite news channel, February 4. It cited links to China’s ruling Communist Party among the reasons.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson had hit back the next day. It said that Ofcom had acted on ‘political grounds based on ideological bias’ and that China reserves the right to respond to protect the rights and interests of Chinese media.
Losing its British broadcasting license was a major setback for CGTN. The channel has a European operations hub in West London and is part a government push to expand China’s soft power and burnish its image abroad.