We are facing a public health crisis that, in global terms, may be the worst for just over a century.
No wonder then that the coronavirus pandemic has pushed many of the stories that make up our usual daily diet of international news to the sidelines.
Nonetheless, many commentators are already speculating about how global affairs may or may not change in the wake of this drama.
That, though, is a long way off yet.
A more immediate question is whether the behaviour of antagonistic countries - Iran and the United States, in this case - as they both struggle to confront this emergency, might provide a glimmer of hope for a better relationship in the future?
The question is posed because Iran has been hit severely by the virus.
The number of reported cases is already more than 17,000 and the death toll stands at 1,192, although many in Iran believe the actual numbers are a lot higher.
Iran's economy is already weakened by US sanctions and, although Washington insists that humanitarian items - medical supplies, for example - remain outside the sanctions net, the web of restrictions on the Central Bank of Iran and the country's ability to trade with the outside world are only accentuating its problems.
Things have been made even more difficult by transport disruption, border closures and so on, prompted by the wider impact of the pandemic.
As a measure of Iran's desperate need, it has taken the almost unprecedented step of requesting a $5bn (£4.25bn) emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This is the first time for some 60 years that Iran has sought IMF funds. A spokesperson for the organisation told me on Tuesday that the IMF "had discussions with the Iranian authorities to better understand their request for emergency financing" and that "the discussions will continue in the days and weeks ahead".
The US, as one of the IMF Executive Board's most important members, will have a significant say in whether Iran gets the money.
Already there are calls from US experts for Iran not just to be given what it needs, but also for the Trump administration to pursue a more compassionate approach to Iran's health crisis in general.
Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on arms control and the Iranian nuclear programme, insisted that there was a moment now when an opportunity can be seized to break the log-jam.
"US policy toward Iran is stuck, failing to change Iran's behaviour except for the worse," he tweeted on Monday.
There is a better policy option. It is not true that Iran only responds to pressure and threats. Pressure works best when it is combined with incentives. Without some semblance of a win-win solution, the pressure campaign will likely lead to escalation ending in war. 3/
"The likelihood of massive protests… seems slim given government directives to stay home and rational fears that mass gatherings will only spread the virus," she wrote.
The US treasury department, she noted, had taken some small steps to clarify that the humanitarian channel to Iran remained open. But there had been no indications that the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" policy was being reconsidered, she added.
"It appears that the crisis will only push Iran deeper into the arms of China and Russia and strengthen those in the regime who reject reconciliation with the West."
"The Revolutionary Guards, who are handling much of the response to the virus and building emergency medical facilities," she insisted, "will grow even more powerful as Iran comes to look less and less like a theocracy with a thin republican veneer and more like a military dictatorship."
So what then is the chance of even some modest rapprochement?
Not much if the public statements of some of the key players are to be taken at face value.
The Trump administration has sought to score diplomatic points in this crisis.
The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said earlier this week that Iran's leaders had "lied about the Wuhan virus for weeks", and that they were "trying to avoid responsibility for their... gross incompetence".
Note there the use of the term "Wuhan virus", which Mr Pompeo prefers to "coronavirus".
Washington is seeking to have a jab at Beijing too, but equally some Chinese figures have been ready to brand the pandemic as some kind of conspiracy created by the US military.
But in regard to Iran, Mr Pompeo has gone further.
He bluntly stated that "the Wuhan virus is a killer and the Iranian regime is an accomplice".
Nonetheless, he said the US was "trying to offer help".
"We have an open humanitarian channel... even as our maximum pressure campaign denies terrorists money."
In terms of potential military confrontation - remember, just a few weeks ago the US and Iran seemed to be on the brink of war - there have been some indirect incidents.
They include rocket attacks on Iraqi military bases used by US-led coalition forces that the Americans believe were carried out by a pro-Iranian Shia militia. One attack killed three coalition service personnel - one of them a British medic - and the US responded with air strikes.
General Frank McKenzie of CentCom, the man in charge of US forces in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee recently that the coronavirus outbreak might make a weakened Iran "more dangerous".
The US is certainly not taking any risks, unusually maintaining two aircraft carriers in the region.
Of course, the indirect culpability of Iran in such attacks is always contested - certainly by the Iranians themselves.
This is not necessarily a tap that Tehran can just turn on and off at will. Many of its proxies have local concerns and goals.
The Shia militias in Iraq are eager to force the Americans out. But Iran could probably do a lot to scale down the frequency or severity of incidents.
Indeed, in general the pandemic does seem to be reducing military confrontation in the wider region.
On the Iran-Israel front in Syria, things seem to be noticeably quieter. And Gen McKenzie also noted that the US might have to "ultimately live with a low-level of proxy attacks", a statement that reduces some of the drama from the situation.
The Iranian leadership too has been talking tough.
President Hassan Rouhani noted on Wednesday that Iran had responded to the US killing of the famed Revolutionary Guards General Qasem Soleimani in January, but also making clear that that this response would continue.
"The Americans assassinated our great commander," he said in a televised speech. "We have responded to that terrorist act and will respond to it."
So, on the face of it, there's not much chance of taking the sting out of the US-Iran relationship.
Washington's attitude to the IMF loan may be a pointer to how things might develop. And indeed rhetoric should not necessarily be taken at face value.
At the end of February, the US contacted Iran via the Swiss government to say that it was "prepared to assist the Iranian people in their response efforts".
Only on Tuesday, Mr Pompeo, along with his tough words to both Tehran and Beijing, spoke of his hope that Tehran might be considering releasing some Americans detained in the country.
The temporary release of the British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is another small pointer of a shift in Tehran.
At the end of the day, Iran may well need to tacitly restrain some of the groups who have the Americans and other Western forces in their sights.
They will need to release detained foreign nationals.
And the Trump administration will need to decide whether this is an opportunity to create a small opening with Tehran along sound humanitarian grounds or, whether the mounting pressure on the regime from both sanctions and now the coronavirus, is a moment to double-down.
It could be a fateful decision for what comes next when the pandemic has passed.
We are facing a public health crisis that, in global terms, may be the worst for just over a century.
No wonder then that the coronavirus pandemic has pushed many of the stories that make up our usual daily diet of international news to the sidelines.
Nonetheless, many commentators are already speculating about how global affairs may or may not change in the wake of this drama.
That, though, is a long way off yet.
A more immediate question is whether the behaviour of antagonistic countries - Iran and the United States, in this case - as they both struggle to confront this emergency, might provide a glimmer of hope for a better relationship in the future?
The question is posed because Iran has been hit severely by the virus.
The number of reported cases is already more than 17,000 and the death toll stands at 1,192, although many in Iran believe the actual numbers are a lot higher.
Iran's economy is already weakened by US sanctions and, although Washington insists that humanitarian items - medical supplies, for example - remain outside the sanctions net, the web of restrictions on the Central Bank of Iran and the country's ability to trade with the outside world are only accentuating its problems.
Things have been made even more difficult by transport disruption, border closures and so on, prompted by the wider impact of the pandemic.
As a measure of Iran's desperate need, it has taken the almost unprecedented step of requesting a $5bn (£4.25bn) emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This is the first time for some 60 years that Iran has sought IMF funds. A spokesperson for the organisation told me on Tuesday that the IMF "had discussions with the Iranian authorities to better understand their request for emergency financing" and that "the discussions will continue in the days and weeks ahead".
The US, as one of the IMF Executive Board's most important members, will have a significant say in whether Iran gets the money.
Already there are calls from US experts for Iran not just to be given what it needs, but also for the Trump administration to pursue a more compassionate approach to Iran's health crisis in general.
Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on arms control and the Iranian nuclear programme, insisted that there was a moment now when an opportunity can be seized to break the log-jam.
"US policy toward Iran is stuck, failing to change Iran's behaviour except for the worse," he tweeted on Monday.
There is a better policy option. It is not true that Iran only responds to pressure and threats. Pressure works best when it is combined with incentives. Without some semblance of a win-win solution, the pressure campaign will likely lead to escalation ending in war. 3/
"The likelihood of massive protests… seems slim given government directives to stay home and rational fears that mass gatherings will only spread the virus," she wrote.
The US treasury department, she noted, had taken some small steps to clarify that the humanitarian channel to Iran remained open. But there had been no indications that the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" policy was being reconsidered, she added.
"It appears that the crisis will only push Iran deeper into the arms of China and Russia and strengthen those in the regime who reject reconciliation with the West."
"The Revolutionary Guards, who are handling much of the response to the virus and building emergency medical facilities," she insisted, "will grow even more powerful as Iran comes to look less and less like a theocracy with a thin republican veneer and more like a military dictatorship."
So what then is the chance of even some modest rapprochement?
Not much if the public statements of some of the key players are to be taken at face value.
The Trump administration has sought to score diplomatic points in this crisis.
The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said earlier this week that Iran's leaders had "lied about the Wuhan virus for weeks", and that they were "trying to avoid responsibility for their... gross incompetence".
Note there the use of the term "Wuhan virus", which Mr Pompeo prefers to "coronavirus".
Washington is seeking to have a jab at Beijing too, but equally some Chinese figures have been ready to brand the pandemic as some kind of conspiracy created by the US military.
But in regard to Iran, Mr Pompeo has gone further.
He bluntly stated that "the Wuhan virus is a killer and the Iranian regime is an accomplice".
Nonetheless, he said the US was "trying to offer help".
"We have an open humanitarian channel... even as our maximum pressure campaign denies terrorists money."
In terms of potential military confrontation - remember, just a few weeks ago the US and Iran seemed to be on the brink of war - there have been some indirect incidents.
They include rocket attacks on Iraqi military bases used by US-led coalition forces that the Americans believe were carried out by a pro-Iranian Shia militia. One attack killed three coalition service personnel - one of them a British medic - and the US responded with air strikes.
General Frank McKenzie of CentCom, the man in charge of US forces in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee recently that the coronavirus outbreak might make a weakened Iran "more dangerous".
The US is certainly not taking any risks, unusually maintaining two aircraft carriers in the region.
Of course, the indirect culpability of Iran in such attacks is always contested - certainly by the Iranians themselves.
This is not necessarily a tap that Tehran can just turn on and off at will. Many of its proxies have local concerns and goals.
The Shia militias in Iraq are eager to force the Americans out. But Iran could probably do a lot to scale down the frequency or severity of incidents.
Indeed, in general the pandemic does seem to be reducing military confrontation in the wider region.
On the Iran-Israel front in Syria, things seem to be noticeably quieter. And Gen McKenzie also noted that the US might have to "ultimately live with a low-level of proxy attacks", a statement that reduces some of the drama from the situation.
The Iranian leadership too has been talking tough.
President Hassan Rouhani noted on Wednesday that Iran had responded to the US killing of the famed Revolutionary Guards General Qasem Soleimani in January, but also making clear that that this response would continue.
"The Americans assassinated our great commander," he said in a televised speech. "We have responded to that terrorist act and will respond to it."
So, on the face of it, there's not much chance of taking the sting out of the US-Iran relationship.
Washington's attitude to the IMF loan may be a pointer to how things might develop. And indeed rhetoric should not necessarily be taken at face value.
At the end of February, the US contacted Iran via the Swiss government to say that it was "prepared to assist the Iranian people in their response efforts".
Only on Tuesday, Mr Pompeo, along with his tough words to both Tehran and Beijing, spoke of his hope that Tehran might be considering releasing some Americans detained in the country.
The temporary release of the British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is another small pointer of a shift in Tehran.
At the end of the day, Iran may well need to tacitly restrain some of the groups who have the Americans and other Western forces in their sights.
They will need to release detained foreign nationals.
And the Trump administration will need to decide whether this is an opportunity to create a small opening with Tehran along sound humanitarian grounds or, whether the mounting pressure on the regime from both sanctions and now the coronavirus, is a moment to double-down.
It could be a fateful decision for what comes next when the pandemic has passed.
More than 60 million people are living under an increasingly unbearable lockdown that is growing tighter by the day. The stores that remain open are shuttering earlier and police are patrolling in ever-greater numbers, chasing families out for walks back into their homes and ensuring no one is outside without a valid reason.
Even so, the number of novel coronavirus cases in the country is rising at a rate of around 3,500 new cases or more every day, and the death toll has topped 2,500.
The highest concentration of cases is in the north of the country, where the dead are being stacked up to be buried as funeral services are strictly prohibited. But the living are stacked up too, with coronavirus patients being treated in field hospitals and lined up in corridors inside the bursting public hospitals. Doctors and nurses are being infected, due to a lack of adequate protection.
Many wonder how this is going to end, and whether the economic cost of the lockdown is worth it. There are encouraging signs that the number of new cases in the original red zone in northern Italy may be leveling off, but experts say it is far too soon to consider this a reliable trend.
No signs of change yet
There are more than 2,000 people in intensive care units across Italy -- the worst-affected country in Europe -- according to the latest official figures. Most are concentrated in Lombardy, where the crisis exploded on February 23, but many fear there will be new hotspot areas further south, where infrastructure is was already weaker and where fewer people are adhering to the lockdown measures. Police have given citations to nearly 200,000 people across the country and have said they will clamp down even more, starting this weekend, if people continue to flout the restrictions.
Dr. Giorgio Palù, the former president of the European and Italian Society for Virology and a professor of virology and microbiology of the University of Padova, told CNN he'd hoped to see the first signs of a change after just over a week of nationwide lockdown, but that has yet to materialize. "Yesterday we expected to have a change after almost 10 days of this new measure ... but it's still rising," he told CNN. "So I don't think we can make a prediction today."
Palù said that looking at the number of new cases on a graph, the slope of the curve is still rising, making it hard to impossible when the lockdown will start to reap tangible benefits. And while the outbreak remains concentrated in the north, it's hard to compare regions. "The virus has no border. Not even (in) Italy," he added.
But he believes there's no alternative to the lockdown as long as everyone cooperates with it, and that the rights of citizens cannot overrule safety. "We cannot adopt democracy in information, you must rely on experts."
The lockdown should have been wider and stricter earlier, Palù believes, rather than just focusing on the 11 communities initially placed in the red zone, and it should be tighter now. "We should have done more diagnostic tests in Lombardy where there was a big nucleus. There is no sense in trying to go to the supermarket once a week. You have to limit your time out, isolation is the key thing."
He says the Italian government lagged at first. It was "lazy in the beginning... too much politics in Italy."
"There was a proposal to isolate people coming from the epicenter, coming from China," he said. "Then it became seen as racist, but they were people coming from the outbreak." That, he said, led to the current devastating situation.
Struggle to keep up
Dr. Alessandro Grimaldi, director of infectious disease at Salvatore Hospital in L'Aquila, has just tested negative after treating a coronavirus patient, and will be able to return to work soon after completing another period of quarantine.
"In Lombardy, where I am from, the healthcare system has collapsed," she told CNN, adding that doctors were triaging patients to decide which ones to treat. "There just isn't enough equipment. They choose the young, the medical rule of trying to save who has more probability to live."
Grimaldi said the only way to fight the battle to keep the healthcare system from total collapse is to increase resources. "Maybe the government should have thought of this before, prepare better," he said. "But if you don't see the emergency in front of you, you try to cut."
Grimaldi said that without more resources, the doctors will continue to struggle to keep up. "Today Italy is in the hands of doctors and nurses: there is a team work on the first lines that is fighting a battle for the patient," he told CNN. "We are soldiers that fight for our country. If we can end the epidemic here in Italy, we can stop the epidemic in Europe and the world."
He also agrees that the only way the lockdown will reap benefits is if it is rigidly enforced. "Fighting an enemy like this is difficult for everyone," he said. "China showed us you needed to take drastic measures. Italy was the first to stop flights to China, first country in Europe to do the lockdown."
Alessandro Vergallo, a specialist in anaesthesia and intensive care, said he worried that the European Union delayed its reaction to save the economy. "Of course, Italy's government responded faster and better than many other European countries. Many were embarrassing," he told CNN. "Now, the measures of containment that have gone into effect will help diminish the contagion."
But he doesn't want to cast blame. "It's not the time for controversy. But we are gathering all the necessary data from the end of 2019 to then analyze the behavior of the institutions both national and international in the face of this pandemic. To understand if everything worked when it was supposed to or to understand who failed," he said.
He warned that any return to normality won't happen for months. "Yesterday we were trying to interpret when the flattening of the curve would happen. Since it's an unknown virus, it's hard to interpret the data. We hope that by March 26, we should see a decrease in numbers," he tells CNN. "I think the fear of the various EU institutions feared the damage to the European economy would be bigger than that of the virus. Now we are all paying, not just in Italy, but also other European countries. A huge human and economic price is being paid."
The lockdown has stretched the very fabric of Italian society. The people are anxious and the economy is in tatters. Easter, which traditionally kicks off the tourist season across the country, has all but been cancelled, costing small and medium size businesses their livelihoods. Many have already said they will never reopen. As people default on their loans, both personal and business, the banks will likely need help, and the domino effect of this historical crisis will last long after Italy stops tallying new cases.
HONG KONG—The Chinese government’s move to ban more than a dozen journalists expelled from the mainland from reporting in Hong Kong heightened concerns about a further erosion of the city’s relative autonomy.
Protests that rocked the city last year and sent it spiraling into recession were fueled by widespread public anger at signs of Beijing restricting freedoms in the city. Chinese leaders guaranteed Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy until 2047 under a 50-year agreement called “one country, two systems” with the former colonial power, the U.K.
In an unusual move, China’s Foreign Ministry stipulated that the expelled foreign correspondents wouldn’t be allowed to continue reporting in the Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions. Previously, some journalists expelled from the mainland have relocated and worked in Hong Kong.
The action struck at the city government’s right to control its own immigration policy, an encroachment that could affect the reputation of the business and financial hub. The announcement may further dent confidence in the rule of law in Hong Kong, especially among foreign investors who expressed alarm in 2018 when a foreign correspondent was expelled from the city for the first time.
The expulsions were a “necessary and reciprocal countermeasure China is compelled to take in response to the U.S. oppression of Chinese media,” a spokesperson for China’s Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong said Wednesday, adding that it was in accordance with Beijing’s purview over foreign affairs in accordance with ‘one country, two systems’ and the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.
Under the Basic Law, immigration, including the power to permit or prohibit working, are exclusively matters for the Hong Kong government, said Sharron Fast, a media-law lecturer and deputy director of the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre. But, she added, Beijing has the final authority in cases that also trigger national-security and foreign-affairs concerns.
The Hong Kong government said late Wednesday that its Immigration Department would consider the circumstances of each case and act in accordance with laws and immigration policies. It didn’t specifically address the cases of the expelled journalists.
Some local lawmakers and other critics questioned the legality of the move.
“I hope the government of Hong Kong will push back strongly on this gross infringement on its autonomy,” said U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.), who is the chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. “It will be difficult to maintain the special U.S.-Hong Kong relationship moving forward if Beijing is constantly eroding the ‘one country, two systems’ framework.”
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam speaks to the media in November 2019. Press freedom in Hong Kong is protected under the city’s mini-constitution.
Photo:
thomas peter/Reuters
In November, President Trump signed The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, which requires the secretary of state to certify annually that Hong Kong is autonomous enough from Beijing to retain favored trading status with the U.S. The legislation opened the door for a number of possible punitive measures, such as sanctions, against officials found to be violating the city’s agreed freedoms. The first report is due in a few months.
Beijing’s decree to pre-emptively bar the journalists from the city is unprecedented and a blatant violation of the principle of ‘one country, two systems,’ said Alvin Yeung, a barrister, legislator and leader of the pro-democracy Civic Party. “It will only further reinforce the international community’s impression that Hong Kong is losing its autonomy as China tightens its grip,” he said.
The pronouncement creates significant uncertainty for international businesses that have previously operated under the assumption that their business in Hong Kong was insulated from politics, said Antony Dapiran, a corporate lawyer based in the city and author of the book “City on Fire: the Fight for Hong Kong.”
In October 2018, Hong Kong authorities effectively expelled Victor Mallet, the Hong Kong-based Asia news editor for the Financial Times, after he hosted a press-club talk by an activist who had called for Hong Kong’s independence from China, a speech that angered Beijing. Then, however, local authorities never publicly stated the reason for the visa denial.
The decision to not renew Mr. Mallet’s visa provoked condemnation from the Hong Kong business and international communities. It was seen as a precursor of restrictions on foreign journalists working in Hong Kong that is now coming true, said Emily Lau, a former chairwoman of the city’s Democratic Party.
Press freedom in Hong Kong is protected under the Basic Law and, along with wider free-speech protections and a separate legal system to China, is a major selling point used by the local government to attract foreign businesses to the international financial and trading center. The city is currently reeling from rising unemployment and collapsing retail and tourism industries hurt by protests and more recently, the coronavirus.
Journalists don’t need specific press visas to report and several news organizations, including the Journal and the Times, maintain their regional headquarters in the city.
“As long as they meet the requirements for a work visa, they are free to do reporting in Hong Kong,” said Chris Yeung, chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association. “That the Foreign Ministry has effectively directly applied the order in Hong Kong makes a mockery of the pledge of giving the city powers to handle its internal affairs.”
U.S. citizens visiting Hong Kong for not more than three months aren’t required to obtain visas, according to the consulate website.
Concerns about tightening press freedom grew throughout more than six months of protests in 2019, when many international correspondents flew in to help with coverage. Several journalism organizations condemned the Hong Kong police force’s treatment of reporters covering events on the streets after some were injured.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong expressed its alarm at China’s expulsion order. It called on the Hong Kong government to immediately clarify the situation, and said if the independent decision-making of the local Immigration Department on the employment of foreign nationals had changed, it would “represent a serious erosion of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle.”
China has periodically expelled journalists whose work angered them. Many have then moved to Hong Kong and continued to report on China from the city.
“I feel sorry that they won’t be able to report from Hong Kong, even though some of the reports are biased against the establishment,” said Regina Ip, an adviser to the current local administration and a pro-establishment lawmaker. “It is important that Hong Kong remains an international media center as part of ‘one country, two systems.’”
China's fresh crackdown on U.S. journalists stationed in Beijing not only echoes the Cold War era but comes at a time when the world is in desperate need of independent information by trusted journalists on the front lines of a global pandemic and not by state-run media that pushes propaganda.
The Trump administration and China have been at odds with one another in a very public tit-for-tat feud blaming the other for the origins of the coronavirus as well as China's handling of the crisis.
On Wednesday, China defended its decision to kick out U.S. reporters, saying it had been "compelled" to respond to "unreasonable oppression" of Chinese journalists working in the United States.
"We urge the U.S. to take off its ideological prejudice, abandon Cold War mentality," China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said during a press conference. "China is not one to start trouble, but it will not blink if trouble comes. We urge the U.S. side to immediately stop suppressing Chinese media, otherwise, the U.S. side will lose even more."
"China is not one to start trouble, but it will not blink if trouble comes. We urge the U.S. side to immediately stop suppresing Chinese media, otherwise the U.S. side will lose even more."
— Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang
On Tuesday, China announced that it would be kicking out correspondents from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Voice of America and Time magazine. Beijing justified its actions as retaliation over new rules the Trump administration placed on Chinese reporters, including a 100 reporter cap from five state-run media outlets. The outlets had 160 reporters in total, meaning 60 would be sent back to China.
At the time, U.S. administration officials said the visa caps were to establish "reciprocity" with China on how the two nations should treat journalists.
The U.S. argued that Chinese reporters based in America were allowed to operate unencumbered while the opposite was true for American journalists working in China. More than 80 percent of foreign correspondents surveyed in China have said they had encountered "harassment or violence" when working.
The Trump administration took another swipe at Beijing by designating state-run media outlets as "foreign missions" of the Chinese government to describe their functions as propaganda tools for President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party. The designated five outlets are: Xinhua, CGTN, China Daily, China Radio International and People's Daily, the Communist Party's mouthpiece.
"The individuals that we identified a few weeks back were not media that were acting here freely," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday. "They were part of Chinese propaganda outlets. We've identified these as foreign missions under American law. These aren't apples to apples, and I regret China's decision today to further foreclose the world's ability to conduct free press operations."
The executive editors of the NYT, the Post and WSJ all issued statements strongly condemning Beijing's expulsion of their reporters.
Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the NYT, said it was critical that the governments of the United States and China move quickly to resolve their tit-for-tat issues and "allow journalists to do the important work of informing the public.”
Following the news out of China Tuesday afternoon, the National Security Council tweeted: "The Chinese Communist Party's decision to expel journalists from China and Hong Kong is yet another step toward depriving the Chinese people and the world of access to true information about China. The United States calls on China's leaders to refocus their efforts from expelling journalists and spreading disinformation to joining all nations in stopping the Wuhan coronavirus."
China and the United States have long had a complicated relationship and continuing to call COVID-19 the "Wuhan coronavirus" or the "China virus" is probably not going to help it. China has demanded U.S. leaders stop using the phrases because it stigmatizes China and borders on being racist.
Their threat didn't have much of an effect on President Trump, who doubled down on calling the coronavirus "the China virus."
"China was putting out information that was false, that our military gave this to them. That was false and rather than having an argument I said, 'I have to call it where it came from. It did come from China so I think it's a very accurate term... I didn't appreciate the fact that China was saying that our military gave it to them. Our military did not give it to anybody," Trump said.
"I didn't apprecita the fact that China was saying that our military gave it to them. Our military did not give it to anybody."
— President Trump
He also pushed back on claims China has made that the term "China virus" or "Wuhan virus" places an unfair stigma on Xi's country.
"Saying that our military gave it to them creates a stigma," Trump said.
China and the United States have been trading jabs almost daily.
Xi's Community Party has been working overtime trying to reframe the narrative that China's suppression of vital information about the virus for more than a month attributed to the entire world being infected by the quick spreading COVID-19 virus.
The total number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus worldwide has now topped 200,000, Johns Hopkins University said Wednesday. More than 8,000 people have died from the coronavirus.
