The United States Accused the Chinese of “Harassing” Foreign Journalists

Journalists stand near a screen as Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a video speech at the opening ceremony of the World Trade in Services Summit at the 2020 China International Trade in Services Fair in Beijing, September 4, 2020.

The two rival superpowers have restricted visas for journalists. The Trump administration unleashed hostilities in 2020 against Chinese media in the United States, in the name of fighting restrictions faced by the foreign press in China.

This policy provoked retaliation from Beijing. The Chinese regime has expelled several journalists from the other country in recent months.

” For decades, China has threatened, harassed and expelled American and foreign journalists ,” criticized US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, quoted in a statement from the US embassy in Beijing.

The last point of friction between the two powers is due to the duration of the accreditations. Washington only grants 90-day visas to Chinese journalists on US soil.

In retaliation, at least five foreign correspondents from four US media (including the Wall Street Journal, CNN television and the Bloomberg agency) were unable to renew their press card, which is essential to exercise, according to the Foreign Correspondents Club in China (FCCC).

These reporters, not necessarily American nationals, received official letters allowing them to continue living and working in China , but they can be revoked at any time.

The United States “works tirelessly” to convince China to allow American journalists to practice the profession normally, Ortagus said.

Chinese authorities expelled a record number of 17 foreign journalists in the first half of 2020 by canceling their press cards , according to the FCCC.

Washington imposed a sharp reduction in the number of Chinese authorized to work for their country’s public media in the United States in March. Since then, 60 Chinese journalists have been forced to leave, according to Beijing.

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The Secret Of Wechat’s Success In China: The App That Allows You From Requesting A Divorce To Paying Bills

Thinking about filing for divorce through an application such as WhatsApp, Facebook or even Instagram is at first sight unimaginable. But in China it is already possible to do so thanks to an application. WeChat, the most popular instant messaging service in the country, includes a “divorce” function to be able to make an appointment with a local separation registry office, according to the expert in this app Matthew Brennan advanced in a tweet.

The application, which launched this feature in trial mode in Guangdong province in May, continues to strengthen its dominance in the country. It closed 2017 with 980 million users and, with the Chinese New Year, it became the third app to cross the line of 1 billion users , only behind WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Why is WeChat so popular?

When SMS were very expensive in China

To understand the success of the app you have to go back to its origin, since it was designed with the Asian market in mind. Tencent , a company founded in 1998 by Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong that is Alibaba’s main rival, launched the app on January 21, 2011.

At that time, in countries like the United States, messaging applications had competition from telephone companies, which offered flat SMS rates . But in China, these types of messages were not so cheap, and email did not quite penetrate society, according to The Economist . This made users enthusiastically welcome free mobile messaging apps.

In 2010, Tencent owned QQ, the most popular computer messaging app in China before WeChat came along. The company realized the rise of the internet on phones and saw that the user experience on the computer was different from what it was looking for on the mobile. It was then that she decided to develop a new application thinking about its use on smartphones. Thus was born WeChat, whose original name is Weixin, which literally means “micro letter”.

Once this new app hit the market, Tencent took advantage of QQ’s user base and allowed them to transfer their contacts to the new app, according to the same newspaper. This fact gave WeChat an edge over the rest of its current competition in China. Within the country, WeChat’s main competitors are Weibo, QQ, Momo, Tantan or Oppo, according to eMarketer.

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