A media war with no winners

Ananth Krishnan/The Hindu

Chennai, June 16: When, on the morning of April 4, 2023, I received a call from China’s Foreign Ministry informing me that my journalist visa had been frozen, my first thoughts had nothing to do with the broader significance of the world’s two most populous countries expelling each other’s reporters. Matters more pedestrian came to mind. What would happen to my cat? And my belongings in my Beijing apartment? Would my daughter be able to finish her term in school and say goodbye to her classmates? Questions that, two months on, I still don’t have clear answers to.

For reporters caught in the crossfire of a media war, geopolitics can hit close to home. Since 2020, more than a dozen journalists have effectively been expelled by not having their visas renewed — three Indian reporters in China and the rest, Chinese reporters in India. For the reporters involved, the perfunctory headlines about journalists being kicked out means moving house suddenly (in the case of two Indian reporters, even that was not possible because Beijing decided to immediately freeze their visas and bar their return to China even to pack up), pulling children out of school in the middle of term, or even prolonged family separations because of visa uncertainties. Thanks to the expulsions, now only one reporter from each country remains on the other side of the border. That number may soon be down to zero. The last Chinese reporter in India is awaiting his visa to be renewed. Should it be declined, China has said that the last Indian reporter in Beijing will have to leave the country.

How did it come to this? The current spat began with New Delhi in 2017 deciding to issue only three-month visas for Chinese reporters. The Indian government hasn’t publicly given an explanation for this, but the move followed the expulsion of three Chinese reporters after they visited a Tibetan settlement in India without obtaining the necessary permission from the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The three-month visas appeared to be designed to prevent Chinese reporters from travelling, as their passports were forever held in endless cycles of submissions and renewals. It also meant Chinese reporters in India had trouble renting apartments or opening bank accounts. Several of them returned to China as daily living in India became impossible.

China also bears its share of the blame. Starting in 2020, the Chinese government suddenly stopped issuing new visas to Indian journalists, leaving the number frozen at three. This led to a glaring mismatch, as 14 Chinese reporters were then present in India. In New Delhi’s view, this made it impossible to continue facilitating the presence of Chinese reporters in India. Thus, the expulsions began. But when China finally began granting visas in 2022, New Delhi, however, continued with the expulsions, no reasons given.

From my own decade-long perspective in China, being on the ground, even in a country where access to officials in the Xi Jinping era has been getting ever more restrictive, provides reporters with the texture of a country that is otherwise impossible to understand — a texture gleaned even from conversations with ordinary people or company executives. Official access isn’t everything.

Distance breeds misperceptions. In China’s controlled State media, dispatches may follow the writ of the Communist Party, but I’ve heard from Chinese reporters with long stints in India how their time was eye-opening and far removed from the negative stereotypes that persist on Chinese social media. I’ve known of reporters who have returned to China and ended up championing closer ties — for instance, by starting Indian film or culture clubs. Small initiatives, perhaps, but you have to start somewhere.

Neither New Delhi nor Beijing stands to gain by involving journalists in their larger disputes. What is needed now is a political agreement that insulates the work of the press from diplomatic rows. That, however, remains an unlikely prospect. The media war will likely continue, although it is one with no winners.

ananth.krishnan@thehindu.co.in

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