In February 2020, weeks before Covid-19 paralyzed the world, the Radio Free Asia reporter Jane Tang received a panicked text from a source in Wuhan, China: “They are following me,” the message read. “I’m too scared to move.” Ms. Tang had been investigating China’s cover-up of a new disease that had spread through Wuhan when she learned that Li Zehua, a journalist who had quit his state media job to chase the story, was being trailed by the police. Shortly after Ms. Tang received the message, Mr. Li was arrested.
In contacting RFA, Mr. Li turned to one of the last reliable channels for on-the-ground, uncensored news in China. Since it was established in 1996 by the U.S. government in response to China’s massacre of pro-democracy student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, RFA has reported from regions in Asia hostile to independent journalism: China, North Korea and Myanmar, among others, filling an important gap where free press outlets cannot exist.
RFA’s impact has been crucial in China, where the Chinese Communist Party maintains a stranglehold on all media. The party, which leads the world in imprisoning journalists, relentlessly monitors and surveils social media and punishes people for online comments that run afoul of Beijing’s official narrative. Its advanced censorship and surveillance technologies are constantly upgraded to block unsanctioned news from reaching ordinary Chinese people.
Despite the roadblocks and intimidation, a national survey by Ipsos found that at least 44.1 million users managed to break through China’s Great Firewall weekly to read and listen to RFA’s reports in Mandarin, Cantonese, Uyghur and Tibetan. They seek out RFA to learn the truth about subjects such as natural disasters, mass protests, internal party conflicts and Taiwan’s democracy. The connection goes both ways: Ordinary citizens have provided the invaluable news tips that have fueled RFA’s reporting for almost 30 years.
Yet today, as part of President Trump’s administrative cuts, RFA stands on the brink of extinction. On March 15, RFA’s parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, notified us that the $60 million grant that funded our entire operation was canceled and we would no longer receive our congressionally appropriated funds. Since then, RFA has been forced to sever contracts with almost all of our 463 on-the-ground stringers and furlough more than three-quarters of our 391 full-time staff members. Our studios are empty, and news production is minimal. Entire services in some languages have gone dark. Layoffs are imminent.
While the United States divests from providing free, uncensored press in China, the Chinese government continues to ramp up its global disinformation operation. China pours billions of dollars annually into a global media influence campaign that includes a radio program in some 50 languages, and its China Global Television Network operates in more than 70 countries. Beyond its official transmissions and websites, Beijing gives away content to media outlets throughout Africa, the Pacific region and Southeast Asia, and reportedly pays non-Chinese influencers to gush about subjects like tourism in Xinjiang, home to the repressed Uyghur minority.
