China

China bans BBC World News from airwaves after U.K. banned Chinese network

Published

10 months ago

February 11, 2021

Staff Writer

BBC World News has been banned from airing in mainland China one week after the United Kingdom withdrew the broadcasting license for the state-sponsored China Global Television Network (CGTN) in an apparent tit-for-tat move from Beijing.

Last Friday, Ofcom, the U.K.’s media regulator, announced that it had revoked a license for CGTN to broadcast in the country.

The Global Times, an English-language newspaper in China, reported Friday local time that the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) has prohibited BBC World News from airing in the country, with the NRTA saying the channel had “infringed the principles of truthfulness and impartiality in journalism.”

In a statement posted to Twitter Friday afternoon, the BBC said: “We are disappointed that the Chinese authorities have decided to take this course of action. The BBC is the world’s most trusted international news broadcaster and reports on stories from around the world fairly, impartially and without fear or favor.”

A spokesperson for the BBC told this reporter that they “were never allowed in mainland China and Chinese homes. They limited our distribution and also blacked out our reports on Chinese subjects, so BBC World News was only available in international hotels.”

According to Reuters, the NRTA issued a statement saying an investigation concluded that the British broadcaster’s reporting on China “seriously violated” regulations that news organizations be “truthful and fair.”

The Global Times referenced “biased” BBC reports about China, in particular the BBC’s coverage of the authoritarian regime’s detainment of more than a million Uighur Muslims at camps in the northwestern Xinjiang province. In a story last week, the British outlet reported that, according to a Uighur detainee, systemic rape and torture are prevalent at those camps, which China’s foreign ministry has denied.

China’s treatment of the minority group has drawn worldwide criticism. At the very end of his tenure last month, then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the regime’s actions against Uighurs as “genocide.”

“Chinese observers said the BBC has turned into ‘a rumor mill’ that deliberately throws mud at China, and the decision to suspend its broadcast sends a clear message that China doesn’t accept fake news,” The Global Times also wrote.

You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @Douglas_P_Braff.

China

Experts Say United States Vulnerable to ‘Electromagnetic’ Attack by Chinese

Published

1 week ago

November 30, 2021

Staff Writer

When Joe Biden was trying to convince Americans to vote for him to become the next President back in 2019, he belittled the concept that China is a danger to the U.S. “Come on man, China’s not a threat” said Biden.

Experts, however, continue to show just how wrong Biden has always been. Fox News reports “experts are warning that the United States is vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack from adversaries such as China, and that time is running out to invest in defending the country from it.”

Last week during a virtual forum hosted by the Universal Peace Federation, Peter Vincent Pry, the executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, said “that poses a real threat of possibly being able to win a war with a single blow by means of an EMP attack.”

“Moreover…they don’t envision employing an EMP by itself. It would be used in conjunction with cyberattacks and physical sabotage, and non-nuclear EMP” added Pry. Experts also warn that while an EMP attack would be “bloodless” at first, a yearlong blackout could kill roughly 90% of the American population.

Fox News reports:

The U.S. electric grid and other infrastructure – such as communications and transportation systems and water and sewer services – could all be devastated by such an attack, experts like Pry warn, noting that time is of the essence for the U.S. to defend itself.

China already possesses “super EMPs” and last summer tested a new hypersonic glide vehicle that analysts warn could deploy the EMP and cause a long-lasting blackout that would shut down key infrastructure and cripple the military’s ability to communicate.

A Pentagon report on Chinese military capabilities details how China has invested heavily in its EMP program, with a strategy that “emphasizes suppressing, degrading, disrupting or deceiving enemy electronic equipment throughout the continuum of a conflict while protecting its ability to use the cyber and electromagnetic spectrum.”

“The PLA is likely to use electronic warfare early in a conflict as a signaling mechanism to warn and deter adversary offensive action. Potential EW targets include adversary systems operating in radio, radar, microwave, infrared and optical frequency ranges, as well as adversary computer and information systems” adds the report.