The Trump administration revoked the visa of a Chinese national working for the state news agency Xinhua in the United States, a direct reciprocal action after Beijing expelled Vivian Wang, a China correspondent for The New York Times. A person familiar with the matter confirmed the visa revocation, and a State Department official confirmed the plan to revoke the visa, signaling the state’s direct involvement in controlling information flows.
The Chinese state’s expulsion of Wang was apparently triggered by the appearance of the Taiwanese leader in a DealBook event one year ago, in which Wang had no direct role. During the event, host Andrew Ross Sorkin referred to Taiwan as a country, and Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te warned of Beijing’s aggressive behavior in the Taiwan Strait, vowing that “Taiwan will do everything necessary to protect itself.”
This incident unfolds amidst escalating tensions between the two global powers. Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a mid-May summit with President Donald Trump in Beijing, warned that China and the U.S. could “collide or even clash” over Taiwan if the issue is not handled properly. The Chinese government maintains its claim of sovereignty over Taiwan, which split from the mainland in 1949 after Mao Zedong’s communists won a civil war.
State as Enforcer
Both the U.S. and Chinese states have consistently utilized visa and accreditation policies as instruments of national power, rather than upholding principles of a free press. All foreign journalists must be accredited by China’s foreign ministry to report in China, a policy Beijing has used to expel or deny entry to foreign journalists whose work has “upset the Chinese leadership” or is viewed as “unfavorable or malicious coverage” of China.
For example, six years ago, the Chinese government expelled three Wall Street Journal correspondents after the newspaper published an opinion piece titled “China is the Real Sick Man of Asia” following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This action demonstrated the state’s willingness to suppress reporting deemed detrimental to its image or interests.
In a parallel move, six years ago, the U.S. State Department designated some major Chinese news groups, including Xinhua, as “foreign missions.” This designation explicitly recognized Xinhua’s role as a “mouthpiece of the party and the government,” tasked with distributing official news, thereby framing its journalistic output as state propaganda.
Following this U.S. designation, Beijing drastically limited visas for journalists working for U.S. media. In the first half of six years ago, at least 18 foreign journalists working for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal were expelled, according to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China. Many others were granted only short visas, ranging from one to three months, as documented by the group’s annual survey.
A temporary reprieve came through a one-time agreement between the two governments, which allowed a small number of U.S. correspondents to enter mainland China. Vivian Wang was among those who entered under this agreement, highlighting the precarious and conditional nature of journalistic access when caught between competing state interests.
Liberal Solutions Fail
The New York Times, through its executive editor Joseph Kahn, issued a statement on its corporate website, asserting that “The Chinese government’s decision to expel Vivian Wang is wrong.” Kahn added that “Her expulsion will make it even harder for our global audience to get accurate, independent and in-depth reporting about the world’s second largest economy at a critical time.” This framing emphasizes the need for market intelligence on China, implicitly serving the interests of global capital.
The New York Times also stated it “does not ask governments to revoke media credentials or otherwise interfere with the work of any journalist.” The paper called for Wang to be reinstated and urged both governments to reverse what it termed a “deterioration in journalist access.” Such appeals for a return to normalcy within existing structures fail to address the fundamental role of both states in using media access as a tool in their ongoing imperialist rivalry, reducing journalists to pawns in a larger geopolitical struggle for economic and strategic dominance.