Beijing is planning to push its largest media organizations to expand abroad with the goal of disseminating China’s message to a global audience. On Tuesday, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported that the Ministry of Finance will be supporting the plan with about 45 billion yuan-about $6.6 billion-in grants and subsidies. The primary beneficiaries of the largesse will be state-broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), the Communist Party’s People’s Daily, and state-run Xinhua News Agency. The goal will be to “better convey a good image of China to the world.”
To accomplish this task, Xinhua will almost double the number of its bureaus so that it will have offices in almost every country, CCTV will add Russian and Arabic channels, and People’s Daily will launch an English-language edition of its Global Times tabloid. Most ambitious of all is Xinhua’s plan to begin a worldwide 24-hour news channel on the model of Al Jazeera.
Should the United States grant access to the new Xinhua channel? Perhaps we should ask a broader question: Should we allow any Chinese media-television programming, books, newspapers, or magazines-here?
We are an open society, of course, protected by the First Amendment, the core of our civil liberties. Yet as the Supreme Court has noted, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, the Chinese government views the United States as an adversary in much the way the Soviet Union once did. And although its acts are more subtle than those of Cold War-era Moscow, Beijing constantly works to undermine the United States. So there should be room for legislation that prohibits Chinese media from the American market.
What would be the justification for such a prohibition? The United States, for example, could block the media of countries that block our media. The Chinese central government prohibits access to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia and severely restricts CNN and other privately owned networks, of course. Yet at the same time, CCTV is allowed to distribute its English and Chinese programming on cable in the United States.
Therefore, Chinese media access to the United States is, among other things, a trade issue. The buzz word is “reciprocity,” and we should think about demanding it.
