March 30, 2021
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China is concerned and saddened to learn that John Sudworth, the BBC’s award-winning China correspondent for the last nine years, left mainland China at short notice on March 23rd amid concerns for his safety and that of his family.
Sudworth left after months of personal attacks and disinformation targeting him and his BBC colleagues, disseminated by both Chinese state media and Chinese government officials. These included videos posted online by state media that named him and used footage of him obtained from Chinese police cameras.
Sudworth had already endured a long period of uncertainty about his ability to raise his young family in Beijing, after spending the past two years being kept on a series of short visas, variously lasting one, three and six months. This appeared to be in retaliation for his coverage of Xinjiang, the Covid-19 pandemic and other issues that Chinese foreign ministry officials repeatedly said had crossed “red lines”. A foreign journalist visa’s normal duration in China is 12 months. Sudworth’s wife, Yvonne Murray, the China correspondent of RTE, the Irish broadcaster, left with him.
Abuse of Sudworth and his colleagues at the BBC form part of a larger pattern of harassment and intimidation that obstructs the work of foreign correspondents in China and exposes their Chinese news assistants to growing pressure.
The FCCC notes with dismay the increasing frequency of erroneous claims by Chinese state and state-controlled entities that foreign correspondents and their organizations are motivated by anti-China political forces to produce coverage that runs counter to the Communist Party’s official line. Alarmingly, Chinese authorities have also shown a greater willingness to threaten journalists with legal measures, proceedings that could subject them to exit bans, barring them from leaving China.
The FCCC further expresses its concern that foreign journalists are being caught up in diplomatic rows out of their control. The attacks against Sudworth and the BBC escalated after Britain’s broadcasting regulator revoked the license of the Chinese state television channel CGTN after finding that it violated British broadcast rules.
In the light of these worsening working conditions, Sudworth decided to leave China. He forms one of an ever-larger number of journalists driven out of China by unacceptable harassment.
The departure of Sudworth and Murray – on top of the expulsions of at least 18 correspondents last year – is a loss for the journalism community in China and more broadly, for anyone committed to understanding the country.
We urge China to live up to its stated commitment to facilitate unhindered reporting in China. In particular the FCCC calls for an end to dangerous, personal attacks on individual reporters and foreign media outlets.
For further background, see the FCCC’s 2020 annual report on working conditions: