The United States has designated six additional China-based propaganda outlets as foreign missions, the newest push to counter communist propaganda.
The State Department issued a new determination on Wednesday that designates the U.S. operations of Yicai lobal, Jiefang Daily, Xinmin Evening News, Social Sciences in China Press, Beijing Review, and Economic Daily as foreign missions.
“They are all substantially owned or effectively controlled by a foreign government. We’re not placing any restrictions on what these outlets can publish in the United States," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters during a news conference. "We simply want to ensure that American people, consumers of information, can differentiate between news written by a free press and propaganda distributed by the Chinese Communist Party itself.”
The latest determination follows the State Department’s actions on Feb. 18 and June 22, for a total of 15 Chinese outlets designated as foreign missions this year.
Wednesday's announcement is the latest U.S. step to curb Chinese activity in the United States in the run-up to the Nov. 3 presidential election, in which President Donald Trump has made a tough approach to China a key foreign policy theme.
The State Department has previously required Chinese media outlets to register as foreign missions and announced in March it was cutting the number of journalists allowed to work at U.S. offices of major Chinese media outlets to 100 from 160.
In response, China expelled about a dozen American correspondents with The New York Times, News Corp’s Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Beijing also demanded that the Voice of America and Time magazine provide the Chinese government with detailed information about their operations.
Some information from Reuters.