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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.
Its about time. On my last trip to China just a couple of months ago, I did not even bother trying to get a media visa even though I'd been asked to cover/photograph a story for the military press. I declined that story offer simply because getting the press visa was too much of a hassle and you had to undergo extra hassles for all of the camera equipment. Traveling on a tourist visa through China is much easier and they don't give you any grief for even lots of camera equipment.
In fact, the whole visa issue always is a hassle. If countries wanted to ensure that people come and spend money, then why to they (US included) make getting a visa so difficult? I had to either travel to Washington DC to the Chinese embassy or pay a special travel office $140 to broker the visa on my passport for me.
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According to the settlement, China agreed to remove the requirement that financial news providers be licensed by Xinhua and instead will set up an independent regulatory agency to oversee all financial news and information providers.
OK, so Xinhua's their direct competitor, but they didn't really get much, right? The government is still going to oversee things. Is Xinhua even for-profit? Kind of a thin story.
/. readers working for Bloomberg these days?
And how exactly qualify this as news for nerds? Lot of
...about financial information when all human-rights-related things still get filtered? this is no good news for the masses, it only shows the two-faced attitude of china towards capitalism/communism.