Radio Free Asia says it has resumed broadcasts to China
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Radio Free Asia and its sister outlets, including Voice of America, had for years been financed with funding approved by the US Congress.
PHOTO: REUTERS
WASHINGTON - Radio Free Asia (RFA) has resumed broadcasts to people in China, its chief executive said on Feb 17, after cuts by the Trump administration in 2025 largely forced the US-funded outlet to cease operations.
RFA and its sister outlets, including Voice of America (VOA),
In 2025, Ms Kari Lake, a former news anchor appointed by President Donald Trump as acting CEO of USAGM, terminated their grants, alleging waste of taxpayer money and anti-Trump bias. Critics decried the move, which led to mass layoffs, as ceding ground to China and other US adversaries.
“We are proud to have resumed broadcasting to audiences in China in Mandarin, Tibetan and Uighur, providing some of the world’s only independent reporting on these regions in the local languages,” RFA’s president and CEO Bay Fang wrote in a post on LinkedIn.
She said the ability to restart the broadcasts was “due to private contracting with transmission services”, without providing details, but added that rebuilding the network would require consistently receiving newly approved congressional funding.
A bipartisan spending Bill that Mr Trump signed into law earlier in February included US$653 million (S$824.6 million) for USAGM, which oversees RFA, VOA and other government-funded outlets.
That is down from the US$867 million appropriated for the agency each of the past two years, but more than the US$153 million Trump requested that Congress provide to shut down USAGM.
A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington declined to comment on what he said was US domestic policy, but accused the RFA of having an anti-China bias.
“Radio Free Asia has long spread falsehoods and smeared China, and they have a poor record when it comes to reporting on China-related issues,” Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said. “We hope more media outlets in the US can make objective and fair-minded reports on China and China-US relations.”
Chinese state media had praised 2025’s cuts.
US lawmakers of both major parties had said Mr Trump’s drive to dismantle the news outlets diminished Washington’s clout globally at a time when Beijing is expanding its own sphere of influence.
Rights activists say that RFA has for decades shone light onto abuses by China and other authoritarian countries, raising awareness about the plight of oppressed minorities such as China’s Uighur Muslims.
On Feb 13, RFA spokesperson Rohit Mahajan said that the outlet had contracted with private companies to broadcast to audiences in Tibet, North Korea and Myanmar.
Mr Mahajan said the outlet’s Mandarin audio content currently is online only, with the aim to resume regular broadcasts over airwaves soon. Its Tibetan, Uighur, Korean and Burmese radio programming airs over short- and medium-wave frequencies. Previous satellite transmissions via USAGM have not resumed yet, he said. REUTERS
