China’s state-owned newspaper Global Times joined officials from Donald Trump’s administration on Monday in hailing cuts to the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees broadcasters like Voice of America and Radio Free Asia known for reporting that has been critical of Beijing.
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“When it comes to China-related reporting, VOA has an appalling track record,” Global Times said in an editorial on Monday.
“From smearing human rights in China’s Xinjiang [Uygur autonomous region] to hyping up disputes in the South China Sea … from fabricating the so-called China virus narrative to promoting the claim of China’s ‘overcapacity’, almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it,” the outlet continued.
Other nationalist commentators, including a columnist for Communist Party mouthpiece Beijing Daily and Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of Global Times, also had sharp words for VOA and RFA, as did former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen.
In a social media post on Monday, Hun Sen called the cuts a “major contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement, and chaos around the world”.
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