WASHINGTON — 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 (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) known for reporting that has been critical of Beijing.
"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 [Uyghur 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".
Almost all of VOA's 1,300-some employees, including its director Michael Abramowitz, have been put on administrative leave, Abramowitz said in a social media post on Saturday.
Bay Fang, president and CEO of Radio Free Asia, comprised of about 300 US-based employees, called the termination of federal grants to RFA a "reward to dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party".
Both outlets, long criticised by Chinese nationalist and state media, have carried out reporting critical of the mainland government's human rights record and are viewed as arms of US soft power.
Founded in 1942 partly as a response to Nazi propaganda, VOA operated in more than 40 languages online and on radio and television, while RFA was founded in 1996 and operates in nine Asian languages.
According to estimates from their respective leaders, VOA reached more than 360 million people weekly and RFA nearly 60 million.
As of Monday, VOA broadcasts have stopped, and its website has no articles dated after March 15. Meanwhile, RFA is still releasing new content, as staff furloughs were expected to begin later this week.
The suspension of work came after Trump signed an executive order on Friday that instructed seven federal entities including USAGM and the Wilson Centre think tank to reduce their operations to the minimum required by law.
The move, made amid broad reductions to the civilian workforce and foreign aid, was one many feared coming after Trump appointed former news anchor Kari Lake, who echoed his false claims about fraud at the 2020 presidential election, to lead USAGM.
The American president had clashed with VOA in his first White House term, and Lake and other Republicans had accused the US government-funded international media broadcaster of being biased against Trump.
Some Republicans, including House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Brian Mast, have also criticised the outlet for its Israel-Palestine coverage.
In a social media post on Monday, Lake called USAGM a "giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer".
United States President Donald Trump waves as he returns to the White House after attending a board meeting at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, DC, the United States, on Monday. (Photo: Reuters)
Last month, Elon Musk, whom Trump appointed to make the US government more efficient, described VOA and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, RFA's sister outlet focused on Europe, as "radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money" in a social media post.
Asked about cuts to VOA and RFA in light of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's supportive stance on Uyghur rights, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce on Monday said "it's a fluid situation" without elaborating.
It remains to be seen how different entities targeted by Trump on Friday will be affected. In an email on Monday, Mark Green, president and CEO of the Wilson Centre, said the organisation was "crafting plans to comply" with Trump's order.
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats have come out against the move to curtail USAGM outlets, as Republicans remain largely silent.
In a statement on Monday, US senator Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the decision "unfathomable".
The New Hampshire Democrat pledged to "work to ensure that all USAGM functions required by law are protected from this shortsighted assault on press freedom".
"If President Trump gets his way, those who depend on US-supported independent media as alternatives to Chinese- and Kremlin-run media outlets and those living under authoritarian regimes will lose a critical lifeline," Shaheen said.
Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat and ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Trump's move undermined national security and cited RFA's reporting on Uyghurs as an example of America's ability to "counter China's malign influence across the region".
"RFA's pivotal reporting on the situation in Xinjiang helped form the public record of abuses that led the first Trump administration to declare that the Chinese Communist Party had committed genocide against its own people," he said.
Numerous China academics as well as press and human rights groups have condemned the cuts.
James Millward, a Georgetown University professor, called RFA's Uyghur service "our best source of information about the Uyghur region" in a social media post.
In a statement on Monday, the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation highlighted the role of RFA's Cantonese service.
"RFA Cantonese services in particular keep the focus on repression in Hong Kong, working with social media influencers and many who have fled Hong Kong since China imposed its repressive national security law," the Washington-based advocacy group said.
Beijing passed Hong Kong's first national security law by promulgation on June 30, 2020, to prevent, stop and punish secession, subversion of state power, terrorism and foreign interference.
Last year, Radio Free Asia became the first media outlet to depart Hong Kong after the city's enactment of the national security law known as Article 23.
In December, Republicans also terminated the State Department's Global Engagement Centre (GEC), which was established in 2016 under former US president Barack Obama to address "foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts" targeting the US and its allies.