China Revokes 3 Wall Street Journal Reporters’ Credentials; For Alledged “Racists Headline”

On Tuesday, the Trump administration designated 5 State-Run Chinese “News Outlets” as “Foreign Missions” forcing them to register their properties and employees in the us with the federal Government. China has used such organizations in the past to disguise intelligence agents. It has been alleged that this is where much of the Chinese covert opperations both cyber attacks and human intell gathering opperations are stationed, and ran from, in the US.

In retaliation, The Chinese Government recinded the press credentials of 3 reporters from The Wall Street Journal. Saying that a headline the paper wrote, “China is the Real Sick Man of Asia” was “Racist.” Their story was an Opinion piece about the chinese Government’s handeling of the Coronavirus outbreak. China used the article as an excuse to hit back at the United States, namely the Trump administration for hindering their State-Run “News” agencies movements and Spying capabilities in he US.

BEIJING (AP) — China on Wednesday said it has revoked the press credentials of three reporters for the U.S. newspaper The Wall Street Journal over a headline for an opinion column deemed racist by the government.

The expulsions come after the Trump administration on Tuesday designated five state-run Chinese news outlets that operate in the United States as “foreign missions,” requiring them to register their properties and employees in the U.S. China said it reserves the right to respond to what it called a mistaken policy.

The headline on the Journal’s opinion column referred to the current virus outbreak in China and called the country the “Real Sick Man of Asia.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the Feb. 3 op-ed by Bard College Professor Walter Russel Mead “smears the efforts of the Chinese government and people on fighting (the virus) epidemic.”

Read the full story from the Associated press Here::

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Here is the original Wall Street Journal story that provoked the Chinese Government into taking this action: ???❤???

WSJ -The mighty Chinese juggernaut has been humbled this week, apparently by a species-hopping bat virus. While Chinese authorities struggle to control the epidemic and restart their economy, a world that has grown accustomed to contemplating China’s inexorable rise was reminded that nothing, not even Beijing’s power, can be taken for granted.

We do not know how dangerous the new coronavirus will be. There are signs that Chinese authorities are still trying to conceal the true scale of the problem, but at this point the virus appears to be more contagious but considerably less deadly than the pathogens behind diseases such as Ebola or SARS—though some experts say SARS and coronavirus are about equally contagious.

China’s initial response to the crisis was less than impressive. The Wuhan government was secretive and self-serving; national authorities responded vigorously but, it currently appears, ineffectively. China’s cities and factories are shutting down; the virus continues to spread. We can hope that authorities succeed in containing the epidemic and treating its victims, but the performance to date has shaken confidence in the Chinese Communist Party at home and abroad. Complaints in Beijing about the U.S. refusing entry to noncitizens who recently spent time in China cannot hide the reality that the decisions that allowed the epidemic to spread as far and as fast as it did were all made in Wuhan and Beijing.

The likeliest economic consequence of the coronavirus epidemic, forecasters expect, will be a short and sharp fall in Chinese economic growth rates during the first quarter, recovering as the disease fades. The most important longer-term outcome would appear to be a strengthening of a trend for global companies to “de-Sinicize” their supply chains. Add the continuing public health worries to the threat of new trade wars, and supply-chain diversification begins to look prudent.

Events like the coronavirus epidemic, and its predecessors—such as SARS, Ebola and MERS—test our systems and force us to think about the unthinkable. If there were a disease as deadly as Ebola and as fast-spreading as coronavirus, how should the U.S. respond? What national and international systems need to be in place to minimize the chance of catastrophe on this scale?

By Walter Russell Mead – WSJ