WASHINGTON • A report to the US Congress released yesterday accused Chinese state media entities of involvement in spying and propaganda and said their staff in the United States should be required to register as foreign agents.
The annual report of the US China Economic and Security Review Commission said that while China had tightened restrictions on domestic and foreign media, Chinese state media had rapidly expanded overseas.
The commission, created by Congress in 2000 to monitor national security implications of US-China trade relations, said China's state media expansion was part of a broader effort to exert greater control over how China is depicted globally, as well as to gather information.
The report highlighted the rapid growth of Xinhua news agency and noted that it had offices at the United Nations in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco.
"Xinhua serves some of the functions of an intelligence agency by gathering information and producing classified reports for the Chinese leadership on both domestic and international events," the report said.
It quoted testimony to the commission by the US government-funded rights organisation, Freedom House, as saying it was a "loophole" that individuals working for Xinhua and China's People's Daily newspaper were not covered by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara).
Fara, first passed in 1938 in the lead up to World War II to combat German propaganda efforts, requires foreign governments, political parties and lobbyists they hire in the US to register with the Department of Justice.
The China Daily, an English-language newspaper owned by China's government and ruling Communist Party, is already registered under Fara, but only its top executives are required to individually disclose that they are working for the publication.
A bipartisan group of US lawmakers is working to overhaul Fara after Mr Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for US President Donald Trump, and a business associate were indicted for failing to register under the law.
The reform could provide an opportunity for Congress to act on the commission recommendations.
On Monday, the Kremlin-backed television station RT America registered under Fara after US intelligence agencies in a report in January called it a "state-run propaganda machine" that contributed to the Kremlin's campaign to interfere with last year's US presidential election.
Under the act, RT will be required to disclose financial information. In a reciprocal response, Russian MPs yesterday backed new legislation allowing foreign media outlets to be listed as "foreign agents".
Outlets such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which receive funding from the US Congress, would be forced to register as foreign agents.
The amendments would allow international media that receive financing from abroad to be classified as "foreign agents", RIA Novosti news agency reported, a measure previously used only against non-governmental organisations.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
