China Eases Licensing Rules For Foreign Media Sources

The New York Times reports that China has "agreed to loosen restrictions on foreign news and information providers inside the country, settling a trade dispute with the United States, the European Union and Canada." Formerly, all such news sources required licensing through China's official Xinhua News Agency. Note that the focus seems to be on financial reporting and information, rather than all forms of news reporting.

Comments

Re:Press visas

[Roland Piquepaille]

If countries wanted to ensure that people come and spend money, then why to they (US included) make getting a visa so difficult?

China doesn't need foreigners to come spend money on its soil, its making a fortune exporting good abroad anyway.

As for the US, it's another ballgame: the country's attitude toward visas oscillates between the "keeping these filthy underpaid workers from taking american jobs out" attitude in peace time, to full-blown paranoid "the terrorists are coming!" when national security is threatened.

Re:Who cares...

[stephanruby]

...and it only shows the two-faced attitude of the US towards capitalism/human rights.

Re:Press visas

[DNS-and-BIND]

There's no reason to get a journalist visa unless you're a bonafide journalist. I saw that you took pictures of the toilets - no serious journalist would pull stuff like that, it's a guaranteed mark of the China greenhorn.

The US makes getting a visa difficult because Chinese people have a big problem with not going home after their visas expire. China makes getting journalist visas difficult because foreign journalists have a big problem with lying their asses off and distorting stories to fit their political viewpoints. A visa is a sovereign act of a country, it's not like buying tickets to a Mets game. Believe it or not, governments occasionally have other priorities than inviting foreign tourists to spend money.