In late 2013, Matthew Winkler, then editor-in-chief of Bloomberg, launched an investigation into the hidden wealth of China’s elite. Releasing it, he warned in a phone call, “would destroy everything we’ve tried to build.”
More than a decade later, this trade-off between access and accuracy has become a habit. Journalists have learned where China’s red lines are, and the words are quietly disappearing from drafts.
In 2022, the Société Radio-Canada (CBC) closed its Beijing office after more than 40 years. There was no expulsion; Chinese authorities have simply stopped issuing visas to CBC correspondents. As editor Brodie Fenlon says, “the effect is the same.”
The CBC did not reduce its media coverage to preserve access, as Bloomberg did; it was completely removed. Its absence nevertheless serves Beijing’s objective: whether an editorial team softens its own language or loses its correspondents altogether, the result is fewer independent eyes on China and a narrower, more cautious assessment of it.
Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has expanded its control over political language to the point of calling into question journalism’s most fundamental task: describing the world accurately.
Words like “authoritarian” and the name Xi, in anything but flattering contexts, are loaded enough to incite visa denials, expulsions, or quiet exclusion from official access.
When German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, rightly or wrongly, called Xi a “dictator” in 2023, Beijing reacted with fury; in most newsrooms it barely registered. This muted reaction from institutions whose job it is to describe political systems accurately is itself the story.
The price of crossing Beijing’s lines is well documented. In 2020, China expelled at least 13 American journalists according to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, this is the largest expulsion since the Tiananmen era. BBC’s John Sudworth left in 2021 amid pressure over its reporting on Xinjiang, an autonomous region in northwest China that is home to many ethnic minority groups, including the Uyghurs.
The most corrosive effect, however, occurs before publication. Like the Columbia Journalism Review documentedthe Bloomberg decision has become a model: market access and editorial independence are at odds, and media outlets are now softening their language or preemptively dropping stories. American political scientist Perry Link once compared Chinese censorship to a “anaconda in the chandelier» – the snake rarely strikes, but everyone below can feel it watching.
The result is not fake news, but a slow shrinking of the words journalists will use.
I should declare my interest. I study authoritarian governance for a living, and “authoritarian” is not, in my field, an insult. It is shorthand for systems based on concentrated power, limited pluralism, and strict constraints on civil liberties. By any standard academic definition, China qualifies.
However, Beijing considers this word an insult, and some media bypass it. When newsrooms resort to euphemisms – whether “one-party rule” or official currencies like “global democracy» – they participate in a kind of linguistic whitewashing, leaving the facts correct but the framework shifted in favor of China.
The problem is not limited to the choice of isolated words. Journalists must decide whether the Xinjiang facilities are “camps,” whether the Hong Kong security law is a crackdown or a “restoration of order.” Each choice shapes how readers understand China.
The dilemma is real. Correspondents in the field produce reporting that nothing else can replace, and some editors say that keeping a desk, even at a certain cost, is the least bad option. The problem is the ratchet: Each compromise sets a new benchmark, and Beijing uses access as leverage for all outlets at once.
The latest report from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, “New red lines“, found that 86 percent of correspondents surveyed had their interview requests refused or canceled, and 38 percent said their Chinese colleagues had been harassed or intimidated.
Surveillance is everywhere: a provincial system in Henan exhibited in 2021 was designed to classify journalists into “traffic light” categories, with a “red” label flagging them for hostile treatment.
When one media outlet softens its language to maintain access, others feel obligated to follow. A single newsroom that challenges Beijing’s terminology or pushes back against access restrictions can be isolated and punished at little cost to Beijing; When media act together, none of them bears the risk alone.
News organizations should publish clear standards for political terminology, protecting classifications like “authoritarian” when evidence warrants it. Press freedom groups should monitor and publicize Beijing’s pressure on foreign media. And the media must respond together: when a person is punished, their peers may echo their language in solidarity, since Beijing’s strategy relies on isolating individual targets.
Canada has particular reason to worry: With the CBC bureau closed, one of its largest newsrooms is now covering China from the outside, leaving the national debate more exposed to compromises made elsewhere.
Journalism exists to describe the world as it is, not as the powerful would have it. The question is not whether calling China authoritarian offends Beijing (it does), but whether that offense will be allowed to reshape the vocabulary on which accuracy of reporting depends.
For now, it’s being decided one newsroom at a time in news agencies around the world. Newsrooms must establish these standards collectively and publicly – before the boundaries of acceptable speech are dictated to them.
This article was originally published on The conversation. Read the original article. 