 Hello and welcome to the Lowy Institute Live. My name is Richard McGregor here in my capacity as the Institute Senior Fellow for East Asia. This event examining the issue of China and the foreign media is the latest in what we would call what we call the Long Distance Lowy Institute. With COVID-19 our public events are now streamed live rather than being held at our headquarters and we're grateful to see that so many people have signed to watch and listen today. First of all some quick housekeeping. On the base of your screen you'll see a Q&A button which is where you can submit questions to the panelists. We'll be reviewing and moderating those questions and we'll ask some of them towards the end of the event. We've also received questions submitted during the registration process. So please your name and affiliation with the questions and keep them short. So to the topic. China and the foreign press have always had an uneasy relationship. But like China's relations with the US they've gone downhill rapidly of late. China has recently effectively expelled about 20 foreign journalists, mainly Americans but also two Australians, working for the three major US national newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. A number of journalists from The Wall Street Journal were expelled in February and officially in response to an opinion article, which the Chinese government said was racist and which they demanded an apology. About a month later in March at midnight on March 16, the foreign ministry in Beijing announced that American journalists with all three newspapers would also be expelled. Stensibly this was in response to decisions by the US government and the number of Chinese journalists working for the state media in the US. Now even after 1989 and the crackdown on protesters in Beijing and other cities in China, this is quite unprecedented. Now to explore these issues behind the dispute, we have three senior journalists who have been based in Beijing or are based there now. I'm going to keep their CV short. You can find them all on the Loewe website. We have Josh Chin, who's the Deputy Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal, who's joining us tonight from Tokyo. And if I fill the Bureau Chief for The Washington Post, who is joining us from Havlock North in New Zealand. And Jane Perles, the former Beijing Bureau Chief for The New York Times, who is in Sydney. Thanks to you all. Josh, to start with you. You're in Tokyo because you had to leave the country. Effectively you were kicked out. Could you tell us what happened there? What was behind the Chinese government's decision? I'd say I've been working in Beijing as a reporter for about 15 years. And I never really thought I'd see anything like this. And two months into life as an ex-billy, and I think if I'm being honest, I'm probably still a little bit in denial. You know, at the time, the government had sort of been, had been ratcheting up pressure on news organizations. They, in a few cases, they had refused to renew visas for reporters they didn't like, including for one of my colleagues. So we had a sense that things were going in a bad direction in terms of the relationship between the Communist Party and foreign media. But, you know, they hadn't actively expelled a reporter since 1998. And for them to kick out three of us from the same news organization at the same time was, as you said, totally unprecedented, complete shock. I can't go into a ton of detail for a variety of reasons, but what I can say was it was pretty clear from the way they delivered this message to us that the decision came from a pretty high level, from higher than the foreign ministry and from people who basically seemed to have kind of given up on engagement in the same way that the people in the U.S. government have. And the reason I say that is, I mean, when they called, you know, so they called my bureau chief in at the time his visa was up and we sort of felt like he, that they might actually refuse to renew his visa that was sort of our worst case scenario. I was actually at the foreign ministry when the meeting was happening, but it was happening, but they didn't let me in. And instead they announced the expulsions of me, my colleague Phil Wen, an Australian, and then Chow Dung, another journal reporter who was in Wuhan at the time. And, you know, the way they delivered it was like they were reading an imperial edict, right? There was sort of no discussion at all. They read it off, they read a statement and they said, that's that. And half an hour later, they announced it at the foreign ministry press briefing, which kind of made it, you know, we sort of had vague hopes of reversing it, but once they made it public, that was it. And the official reason for doing so is an opinion article on the Wall Street Journal headline, the sick man of Asia, which the government of the foreign ministry took great offence at. Do you think that was the real reason? You know, I mean, I don't doubt that there were people in the Communist Party who were quite angered by that headline, but I should note that, you know, the Wall Street Journal has a, you know, like most newspapers has a really, really strict separation between, between its news side and its opinion side. So no one, none of the reporters in the bureau in Beijing had anything to do with that opinion article, which is something that the, the foreign ministry knows very well. We made that point to them countless times and they've always known that. They've complained about Wall Street Journal opinion headlines for years. So this is not something new to them. So, you know, I think that maybe there were people within the party who were upset at that headline and, and, you know, there's an argument for them to be justifiably upset at that headline. But I think the response, you know, kicking out expelling three reporters seemed fairly disproportionate to me, which suggests to me that there was there were other, other factors at play. Right now, I should have mentioned at the start, in fact, I did, but I, we had technical problems. I would like to submit a question. There's a Q&A box at the bottom of the screen. You can submit a question there. We'll be reviewing and moderating them later. Please state your name and affiliation and please keep the questions short. Now to Anna, Anna, what do you think is behind this, the unprecedented number of expulsions? Why is China doing this? Is it simply because they're upset with coverage or because they think they can get away with it now? I mean, I think it's a bit of both in a way and that they are feeling much stronger and more powerful in many ways that they don't need us anymore, that, you know, they have the wolf warriors on Twitter and they're able to go out there straight to the audience in some ways. But I think the environment has really changed a lot. And so then we, when we look at what's happened during Xi Jinping's tenure and how Chinese journalists now are required to play an important role in this. And I think that there's a lot of allegiance to the party, you know, to say their job is to pursue the Communist Party's goals there and they have to be on message for this. So I think that what the authorities are doing is trying to control the narrative. And, you know, the pesky thing about foreign reporters is that we don't stick to this playbook in so many cases. We are independent. We go out and we do our own reporting and we tell the truth and you can see what has happened to independent journalists in China or a semi-independent journalist outlets like Xi Shen has been doing amazing work on the coronavirus, but a whole bunch of citizen journalists and other independent people have been arrested and disappeared during this coronavirus outbreak because they weren't sticking with the narrative as the party wanted it told. So I really think this is about control, trying to control the message to the outside world and maybe a little bit about paranoia in some ways. I think that, you know, being maybe confident and paranoid at the same time if that's possible. Yes, well, that is the combination, I think. Jane, let me go to you now. Of course, there is a stated reason for the vast bulk of these expulsions. In other words, it's a tit-for-tat game in Washington. Earlier this year, I think the US pressed certain Chinese state media organs in Washington to register as state entities. They also cut the number of Chinese journalists from state entities in the US itself. So China simply, Beijing simply says, well, this is a game. If you want to play this game, we can play this game as well. And that led to the vast bulk of the expulsions in March. Is that your understanding of it? And also, was that a good idea for Washington to start getting involved in that? Well, I think this outcome is entirely predictable. The Trump administration in early March said that they were going to expel 60 Chinese journalists. There are 160 in Washington. And they were going to expel 60 from five state media organizations. This had long been on the cards with previous administrations. The Bush administration, the Obama administration had looked at the Chinese journalists. Everybody knew that some of them were doing double duty filing stories, but also filing for the intelligence agencies. And earlier administrations were troubled by this, but didn't decided not to expel Chinese journalists because they knew what was going to happen, that there'd be retaliation. And the Trump administration had other options. They could have restricted visas. They could have maybe sent out far fewer journalists. It wasn't necessary to expel 60 journalists. And some people think it's not such a bad idea to have journalists in the country if they are doing double duty because if they're filing for the security services, maybe it's interesting to know what they're interested in. And I think there is a fair argument to say that if you want to take on China, you don't have to become like China. And you don't have to limit the press in your own country, i.e. by expelling Chinese journalists. And in a funny kind of way, the Trump administration is expressing free press, open access, because ironically, Chinese journalists in Washington can go into the Oval Office and in the daily scrum with President Trump ask him questions. And they do, and they ask him good questions. So I think the Trump administration has harmed American journalism by its own full hardiness. In fact, I think the New York Times headline, if I may say, sort of summed it up. It said that the US tried to teach China a lesson in the media but it backfired. Did the Trump administration miscalculate in your view, Jane? Well, they wouldn't see it as miscalculating because they don't love the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. So there's a part of them. It's quite happy to see us out of there. Josh, I'll come back to you now. Having been through this process, as you say, when the expulsion order for the first batch of Wall Street Journal reporters, it was read out sort of robotically and there was no discussion. China obviously has changed under Xi Jinping. It's more powerful, more assertive, more confident of itself. Do you think there are still some advocates in the system for foreign journalists? And I guess that's a question in a broader context. Advocates in the system for maintaining engagement for the West, not taking on the West. Sure. I mean, I think that those people still exist. I mean, you know, you had in the, it was interesting, you know, in the Hu Jintao administration sort of obviously you had, those people had more of a voice and you could sort of see it in the Hu years because you had these sort of this constant, it was kind of like an accordion, right? It was just constantly sort of control was tightening and loosening all the time. And in some ways it was kind of, you could see these battles playing out between hardliners and people who were more liberal and, you know, there was this constant calibration. So a lot of those people are still in the party. They still, you know, have senior positions. But I think that, you know, the political environment has shifted so much under she that those people, they just don't have, they don't have much of a voice, frankly. I mean, you don't, you don't see it as much, you know, you know, every once in a while here and there in sort of economic policy, you can sort of see the evidence of those voices. But that's really the only area and certainly not in media. I mean, MOFA is a really, the foreign ministry is a really interesting example, right? And that they used to be probably the most dovish agency in the government. I mean, as a reporter, you used to be able to call them up. And, you know, if you were being harassed while reporting, I mean, didn't happen all the time, but you could get occasionally a MOFA official to help you out with local police. At least, at the very least they answered your phone calls and pretended to be sympathetic. And that is, that is effectively over now. And do you see Josh the same trend in actually talking to people as, you know, the government has tightened the rules of tightened under Xi Jinping. So is your ability to gain access to officials, to scholars and the like? Has that all gotten worse as well? Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that's, I mean, you can really see that there's a, you know, a climate of fear around people in academia, officials, anyone's talking, talking to the foreign media, being seen as talking to the foreign media. And, you know, I have a good friend I've known for years who was an internet scholar and one of the top universities in China. We used to call all the time just to get his thoughts on, you know, anything having to do with Chinese internet. You basically at one point told me to stop calling because he couldn't, it was not good for him to be talking to me anymore. And, you know, even official, even scholars who were sort of seen as, who are government advisors, who are tight with the government and who used to, used to be their role to sort of deliver the government's message to the foreign media. Even some of them become more reluctant. And then it's, you know, and then you get down to this sort of, even the level of on the street talking to regular people. I think the party is fairly successfully poison the minds of a lot of people in China against foreign media and sort of demonize foreign reporters as agents of, you know, Western imperialism and whatnot. And so, and then that, you know, message has sort of seat down and you do get pushed back from people when you're trying to report. And if I could come back to you, as we all know, there's been some particular stories and recently it's really over the last decade that have particularly angered the Chinese government. There were a series of stories, New York Times, Bloomberg and the like, about the personal wealth of some of the top members of the Politburo, Wenjiao Bao and of course Xi Jinping's family himself. There's also been extensive reporting on Xinjiang and the internment camps used to house Uighurs in the name of anti-terrorism. Do you think this is, there's any particular trigger amongst these, in these stories that's hardened Chinese attitudes, the foreign press? Yeah, obviously the stuff that concerns the leadership and money is extremely sensitive and anything that touches on the top leader in particular is kind of the third rail there and they don't want independent reporting about that. So a lot of the recent cases where journalists have been expelled have all been related to, yes, that very top level of leadership and money related stories. So yes, Wall Street Journal story and Bloomberg and New York Times before that are all related to that. I think with the Xinjiang reporting, this is something where obviously the authorities had tried to obstruct journalists from doing their jobs and from covering this and you know it's thanks to the great reporting and a shout out now for Chris Buckley in particular that the reporting that they had done from the Xinjiang region had contributed so much to the world's understanding of what was going on there and how completely at odds it was with the official version of events. So even during that period I think it's completely normal to have Chinese government goons like stop you, physically stop you, lay down fake traffic accidents, all sorts of things to obstruct journalists there. And I mean now in a way the story has passed because they have normalized the situation if you go to Xinjiang now you won't see any of this. But I think that China learned from this. They didn't want journalists to be able to be out there running around and telling their own story. And so I mean there's two sides to this I think and part of it obviously is the expulsions of journalists who have been doing this kind of work. But also the way that, which is less visible I think from the outside, the way that the authorities are now using visas as a weapon against journalists. So you hear about the ones who have been kicked out but what you don't hear about is all of the journalists on very short visas. So whereas before it was standard to have a 12 month visa, now there are many journalists who are on six month, three month, even one month visas which means basically as soon as you get your visa you have to submit again. And those one month is very short visas have pretty much entirely been related to Xinjiang reporting. And that is the government's way of trying to stop, to threaten people, the weaponising visas in a way to try to make people stop. But in many cases I think it backfires because journalists want to show that this will not influence their coverage and they will go out and do more of it. Yes, very quickly on Xinjiang, what struck me of course people were tracked and harassed when they were there. I was surprised that people were even able to get there. Is that no longer the case? Is it not possible now to even go to Xinjiang to try to do these stories? I mean last year I went to Xinjiang and you know, for me it's possible to go there. I wasn't knowingly followed during the day. But it depends. Some people still are harassed and things like I guess it depends which part like Houtan I think is particularly a hot spot where people do get surveilled much more intensively. But also like for me when I've been there I haven't tried to really do reporting there because I don't want to endanger the people I talk to. So it's more like going to look around and to get colour and things to pad out a story or to like add texture to a story that's been reported outside of the country. So it's forcing us to kind of be inventive in that way. Okay, Jane, back to you now. We're talking about this in the context of the US-China relationship. Obviously it's mainly American reporters who've been targeted. Is this a US-China story or is it a China and the world story? You know, there's excellent German, French reporters, UK reporters and the like. Why is it mainly about America? Well actually I think it's both. It's basically obviously about the American press and it's a US and China and the world story because China is showing its strength and its muscle and its determination to really be number one. I mean I look at this in the context of how China sees itself. And I think although this happened before or during the coronavirus crisis, I think they've decided at the top, game on, the United States is in disarray. Trump is a mess. This is our opportunity to make gains particularly in Asia but also in Europe. So they don't really care, I think, what the United States thinks about this and I think they are aiming for bigger things. The expulsion of the American journalists is just one step of many in showing who's in charge. Yes, I mean we're focusing on this issue as journalists today but this in your view is really one part of a much bigger picture. Absolutely. I think that Xi Jinping, as you all know, as we all know, he made himself emperor for life and he thinks he's got a long road to go and he may have thought maybe this time last year that he would be doing game on a couple of years from now. But I think there's been pretty clearly a decision that they've decided they've come out of this coronavirus pretty well. They're going to try and ignore all the complaints about hiding it and they're going to just push on and this is one aspect of their pushing on. Josh, back to you. In my last stint in China for the financial time from the year 2000 that was at a time when China had just joined the WTO. They were listing their banks on foreign stock exchanges and many of their big energy and other companies and the like. They had a clear interest in communicating with the rest of the world, particularly foreign investors. So at that time, relatively speaking, we got terrific access. You worked for the Wall Street Journal, had to cover similar issues. Is it basically that the Beijing thinks there's no value in having the foreign press? It's all down side for them. They don't need us. Is that a big driver at the moment? Yeah, also in the early 2000s, they had just gotten the Olympics paid for Beijing in 2008. So those were great times for China at the Communist Party. Yeah, I mean, I think if you look back at the history of, I mean, you look about when China decided to let the foreign media into the country. It was in 1978, it was the beginning of reform and opening and the entire reason for that was that they needed foreign investment and no one outside of China was going to invest large amounts of money in China if they didn't feel like they could get reliable information about what was happening there. And I really think that that has been the driving motivation for the party to countenance the foreign media the entire time. I mean, we know that they don't like what we do, they don't like the criticism, Western ideas about what journalism, the function journalism serves a clash with the party's ideas pretty harshly. And I mean, the Wall Street Journal is a great example in the sense that we had for a long time because we were perceived as a primarily financial newspaper. I think the FT had a similar situation. I think we got more leeway than say the Washington Post or the New York Times in terms of our political coverage. We weren't punished. We didn't lose reporters through visa denials and whatnot. And I think that's because they saw us speaking to the American business community. And that has changed completely in the last couple of years. And to me that basically, I mean, obviously don't know it's speculative. No one knows exactly what the decision process is, but I don't think it's coincidental that this is happening at the same time as the U.S. and the Chinese economies are decoupling. And I think if you're the Communist Party, the costs of having foreign media in China maybe outweigh the benefits at this point. That's right. And they're focused on the Chinese market, not the U.S. market anymore. Exactly. Yeah, I know that's a good point. I mean, I think they do have, the Chinese market is big enough and Chinese internet companies have blown up. They're some of the biggest tech companies in the world and they mostly serve the Chinese market. I mean, there are very few of them with the exception of Huawei and I guess now some of the video streaming platforms, those are the only ones that have gotten outside of China. So maybe their perception is they don't need as much as the rest of the world. I mean, obviously that's a really simplistic view and I'm sure that actually isn't the case, but there does seem to be a factor in how they're going about things. And obviously with limited access, journalists have to use other techniques to report. A lot of reporters have focused on documents, for example, maybe filed with the SEC in New York or the Hong Kong Securities Exchange. Others are using, you know, the sorts of imageries that we've used in reporting on Xinjiang, satellite imagery and the like. Can you talk a little bit about that, about the sort of different techniques that journalists would now use about to report on China, open access, as it were, in the absence to being able to talk to Chinese officials? Yeah, well, those are both great examples that you've used and how reporters have been able to use satellite pictures in particular to show the expansion of the camps, the existence of the camps in Xinjiang and what is happening there. The various tranches of documents that have come out over the past year about what has been happening in Xinjiang have shed so much light on what is happening, who has ordered it as well in particular and how it went all the way to the top and some of those papers. I think, I mean, it requires quite a lot of inventiveness in a way and I think a lot of the reporting, not the best, but a lot of great reporting has been about China is now done outside of China. So it's journalists who go to Kazakhstan or Turkey to talk to Uyghurs and people about who are in touch with family members or who have escaped from China and from this camp environment to report about what is happening inside of China. So, you know, in many ways, it's increasingly feeling like reporting about North Korea. You know, even when you are living in China because now it is so difficult to talk to ordinary people and to find out what's going, you know, people are very afraid. Yes, I've had exactly the same experience as Josh and that professors and people who you know are very articulate and very savvy in the system and who would usually talk to you now or they don't want to be associated and they don't want to be in a story that may have negative content about China even if they are saying good thing. They are fighting China's corner in that story. But also ordinary people now don't want to be associated with American media in particular that is afraid of attracting attention. So that kind of reporting has become increasingly difficult. So, yeah, I mean, in a way, it's about maybe I'm trying to bring my background on my lens of North Korea to bear on this. I mean, obviously China is not North Korea, right? Like we can go out, we can talk to people but it's becoming harder and harder and it does feel like it's much more of a jigsaw puzzle of having to put together all of these pieces. I mean, do you feel as though you know very briefly less and less? Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's that famous kind of curve of being a foreign correspondent or anything moving to a country and thinking, you know, I know nothing, I know nothing like one year and thinking, wow, I've really cracked it. I know everything now and now I'm definitely plummeting back down and realizing, yeah. But yeah, it's really hard. I mean, and some of it is just very kind of warps your mind and like even when I was out talking to people and suddenly turned like trendy hipster young people about the Hong Kong situation and things and they would say things like, oh, you know, these spoiled brats in Hong Kong, they don't know how lucky they are and they would be often trumpeting the party line and it's this strange thing where it's like, are they saying this because they should tell me or are they saying it because that's what they know, what they really think and often we, you know, I think it's what they really think but it takes some kind of percolating to figure it out. I think it's not obvious anymore. Jane, to you now, now it's a bunch of journalists talking together. Journalists can be as self-serving as any other profession. Naturally, we would say we're standing up for a thing, you know, principles like free speech and the like. But if you'd look at it from the, you know, and we would probably argue once again, self-servingly that this damages China. It's not in their interest because it's important for the world to know what's going on in China. But for the Communist Party's point of view, is it against their interests to kick out foreign journalists and play hardball for them or will it hurt them in the long run? Before I answer that directly, I just wanted to add something to what Anna had to say about reporting in China now. I think we should also own up to the fact that all of us for many years have had very, very, very talented Chinese researchers who accompany us to most places. And speaking for the New York Times during the coronavirus situation did really brilliant reporting through WeChat and other means. For example, one of our Chinese researchers talked directly to Dr. Lee, the famous doctor who exposed the virus and then was silenced by the government and then finally died. She talked to him on his deathbed basically through WeChat and we were able to get just amazing human stories through this way. And we're still able to do so even though the Chinese government has forced two of our researchers to resign and I think they did the same at the Wall Street Journal. You can correct me if that's wrong and maybe at some other places as well. So, you know, all is not lost on the reporting front. There's nothing like being on the street as Anna described. And when I was there last year in the last year or two of my assignment I would sometimes wake up in the morning and think, oh my God, this must have been what it was like to be in the reporting in the Soviet Union except outside our doors was the sort of the glossiest, most consumer-oriented society that the world has ever seen. So it is, you know, so to get to your question about does this hurt the Communist Party? Look, they don't think so. Otherwise they wouldn't have done it. And as I think Josh said in his opening remarks this seems to have been, is pretty clearly the expulsion of the journalist was approved by the tippy top. It was maybe initiated and suggested by Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Security Services. We don't know. But something as dramatic as this, 20 Western journalists gone in a couple of months was approved by the top. And they obviously think that they have their own methods. The Wolf Warriors, as Anna mentioned, to do their propaganda work and to do their storytelling. And maybe that will work for them. It's hard for me to tell. I mean, I'm not going to put my Western freedom of the press views onto the Chinese Communist Party. They don't believe in it. So let's see how they fare with it. Yes, we'll see about that. Josh, to you now, you're writing a book, well into writing a book, if I'll boil it down on the surveillance state in China, if that's accurate. How easy, how possible, in fact, is it for a foreign journalist in China to actually go about their business without the state knowing absolutely everything that you're doing? Well, you know, I mean, that's an interesting question. And I think, you know, what I've discovered in the course of writing this book is, you know, I mean, you start out and you see all of the sort of amazing, almost magical surveillance technology that Communist Party has at its disposal. I mean, they have some of the best AI researchers in the world working on this problem and some of the best companies. And you sort of automatically, you go to a place like Xinjiang, as Anna mentioned, and the surveillance is everywhere and you sort of assume that they know everything. And I think they want you to assume that they know everything. And you know, what the reality is actually is, I think nobody knows. But I think they've done a really effective job of making everyone think about it constantly. And so whether or not they're actually tracking you everywhere you go, you kind of have to assume they are. And that's partly because you have a responsibility to sources in China, right? You don't want to expose them or put them in danger. And so you have to act as if they are watching you all the time, even if they're not. But I guess you assume if they want to know, they can know. I think, yeah, I think that's a fair assumption. I mean, you know, any sort of cybersecurity expert you talk to, you know, I mean, a government as powerful as China's, if they want to know something about you, they can know it just depends on how badly they want to. Anna, to you now to come back to one of the points Jane made. Absolutely right. There's been heroic and fantastic and brave Chinese working for foreign media, working with foreign journalists as their assistants. But what about Chinese journalists themselves? I mean, are the best journalists in China? Absolutely Chinese journalists who work under extremely difficult conditions. As you mentioned earlier, they do Saising magazine and Sai Jing and the like. A lot of them do terrific work until they're not allowed to. The same trends that we see in the foreign media, you know, less access, less information, less liberty to report on issues. Is that also basically tracked in the Chinese media, both state and semi private? Yeah, I mean, as far as I can tell, and as far as I can see, yes, that does seem to be the case. And even just looking at the kinds of questions and things that the Chinese state media journalists ask at press conferences, it seems, you know, that they are very much remembering their pledge to serve the party and much of this. Like it's very uniform, the coverage that comes from Chinese state media, which I think is why it's so incredibly valuable to have the kind of work, yes, that Saising, I mean, Saising has just been knocking it out of the park during this coronavirus outbreak. Really powerful, great reporting. And, you know, one of the questions is how have they been allowed to do this? I mean, it's fantastic that they have, but there's always this kind of sense of foreboding of how long it will go on. So, I mean, one thing that I am really, really conscious of and to pick up on what Jane said there, that, you know, for us, it's one thing to be a journalist in China and to be going out and, you know, we run the risk of getting kicked out, like Josh has unfortunately discovered. But I'm really conscious of the risks that the Chinese journalists, either the ones who work for foreign media or the independent journalists, like, you know, those doing their own reporting or for places like Saising, the stakes are so much higher for them. You know, they are Chinese, they live in China, they have family members in China and the state has become increasingly willing to take advantage of that and use those family links and things as levers. So, it's an incredibly stressful environment for them in China and so, yeah, I will just say as well that I am in awe of them in this service that they do for our readers in the outside world as a result. And, of course, if you want to join a well-paid profession in China, you won't be becoming a journalist because they're neither well-paid nor given great status as well. Do any of us anywhere become a journalist be well-paid? I think I'm in the wrong place. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, one of the great, kind of, my great regrets about this Chinese system is that the way that it's structured is that we cannot give proper credit as well to the Chinese journalists who work with us in the stories. They are not allowed to have bylines on stories. You know, there's no kind of career path ahead for them. And so, they're really just doing it for the love of the truth and the, I guess, freedom of media and expression there. So, yeah, I really salute them for that. Okay, so we're going to go to audience questions now and I'll direct this first one to Jane. And in the spirit of openness, it's from the CCTV, China Central Television Correspondent in Sydney, Australia, Wang Song. I don't agree with the precepts of this question, but I'll convey it faithfully. He's wondering to what extent China has changed your impression since you spent time there. As a journalist in a Western culture, do you think overwhelmingly negative reports changed your readers and viewers, made them more biased against China and even fostered racism in Australia and elsewhere? Jane, if you're able to take that on, in other words, did you, were you biased, do you think? And did you sort of damage community relations or do foreign journalists do that? I wish we had the power to influence our readers so much, not in the way that the questioner is asking, but I think he overstates our power. Look, I don't think any journalists go to China with an anti-China bias, nor do we have any intention of writing anti-China stories. Most Western journalists I know who want to go to China and who do go to China are intensely curious about China from all aspects, political, cultural, economic, right across the board. And I just refute the idea that New York Times coverage, Wall Street Journal coverage, or Washington Post coverage has fostered racism or anti-China feelings. I, maybe the Trump administration tries to do that. Maybe other governments try to do that, but we in the press do not. And I just like to add to this questioner that many New York Times journalists, for example, who even before they became journalists there, had been to China either to study the language or had spent years there at universities and had a long attachment to the country. And I just think it's unfair to say that we have fostered racism or anti-China attitudes. I can't agree with that. Thank you. There's another question from Valerie Sands. And this is about the PRC trying to control the media message. How likely is it that an independent review of the origin of COVID-19 will be allowed and what implications might this have? Josh, why don't you have a go at that? I think it's extremely unlikely that an independent review of this is going to happen. I mean, I don't really see what's in it for the party. I mean, I think it's clear from the reporting at the time that the journal did and the post and the times have done that there were mistakes in the way that this was handled and early on, I mean, even Chinese media had reported on it, especially extensively in Saishin, for example. So I think it's clear that there are issues with the way the Communist Party handled this initially, that they don't want revisited. And any sort of independent investigation of the origins of the pandemic would inevitably drag that back up. And I think Jane was right in the sense that the party feels like it has a relatively, it's come out of this pandemic in a relatively good position and they can sort of ignore the negative stuff. So I just don't see that happening. Okay, Anna, we have a question from Michael Smith, who I suspect might be the AFR's correspondent in Shanghai. Do you envisage a future scenario where China feels it no longer needs foreign correspondents at all, regardless of what country they represent? Yeah, it's not beyond the realms of possibility, given what we've seen over the course of this year already. In many ways, China thinks that we're annoying and pesky because we do independent reporting and we don't stick to the narrative. So yeah, I could see a situation where they think we've served our purpose. And in some ways like you and Josh were talking about before about how Wall Street Journal FT was very helpful when China was trying to attract foreign investment and appeal to an audience and now China doesn't need to sell itself anymore. Huge market companies have put up with a lot and continue to put up with a lot in order to get access to that market. So I think now they think they are so big that they don't have to worry about this kind of thing now that they can attract investment regardless, that they can write their own narrative and send that out into the world without us. So yeah, I think they see all upside and no, also all downside and no upside there at all. I mean, and just to add, especially to what Jane had said before about, I mean, I also strongly object to the question about cementing racism and things, but one of the things that has surprised me a lot since I've come to China is how, you know, everything is so obstructionist now that there are big roadblocks put up, of course like sometimes literally roadblocks when we want to do stories on Xinjiang and this kind of stuff, but there's a lot of stories that could be good, you know, the kind of things that China would want to be having sent out to the outside world that they also block us from writing. So one thing that really sticks in my mind is last summer they opened this Mars simulation base in the desert in Gansu and lots of Chinese kids were going on summer camp there about going to Mars and I thought, what a wonderful little story I'd like to go and write about these kids and they said, no, for the same, the same reason they said, no, it's American media, you can't come here. So this is the kind of thing, you know, China has made big advances in terms of space and space race or space exploration. So why would they not want us to write about that? I don't know. But they just obstruct us at every turn, I think. Jane, I want you to expand on some of the issues raised there. In other words, this issue of China not needing the West in any form, Western journalists, whatever. Do you think they're right or is that hubris? Well, it's hard to say in this interconnected, globalized world that China doesn't need Western journalists. I think that's absurd. They probably think that they can find Western journalists more to their liking, which I think is also wrong. It's hard for me to imagine, though, that they will shut themselves off completely to Western journalists, to well, to the big newspaper organizations. On the other hand, maybe they think they can do it all by having American journalists and there are plenty of them who go to work for CCTV, China Daily, et cetera. I mean, in Washington, CCTV known there as CGTN has formally announced that those journalists of theirs who are being sent back to China by the Trump administration will be replaced by American journalists who are happy to write the news for CGTN according to the likes of CGTN. I mean, I guess the journalism market in the United States is pretty bad and they think they can find journalists who will do it and they probably will be able to. But if China wants to be a world power, even in a world dominated by China, they can't limit themselves just to Chinese journalists. But I do think they're going to give us, meaning Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, a very hard time for quite a while. I mean, some people think that if Trump loses and a new administration comes in in November, that we'll all be allowed back in. I think that's way over-optimistic. First of all, a new Democratic administration is going to have bigger things to deal with with China than a few journalists. If it's anything like the past, the Democrats will come to Beijing and say to her that's left of the Western media, oh, we're here to push your cause, we'll get you visas, we'll get you back in. But the fact of the matter is that the Western press is about 0.26 of 30 talking points that any new administration or older administration needs to talk to Beijing with. So I think the majors are out for quite a while. And look, AP Reuters, Bloomberg is still there. They can make do with those. Very well, thank you very much. Bloomberg does some great reporting. Reuters does some great reporting. AP too. They don't need the three of us. How depressing. Josh, to you, for Madam Kendall, do you believe that the social credit system is playing a part in the level of engagement you're able to have with your sources? I don't. I think the social credit system is a very thorny issue. I mean, I think there's a lot of mythology and hype and confusion around what it is. I mean, I think even amongst officials in China, I think it's a really, it's hard to know exactly what's going on with it and how much, how much bite it has. As far as we can tell, you know, some people are ending up on blacklist as a result of it. And, but mostly that has to do with legal cases. It's just a, it's just a sort of another form of administrative punishment, you know, for people who owe money to other people or whatnot. So I don't think, I don't think that that in and of itself is playing a role, but I do think this, this notion of the party as having much more visibility into individuals lives and ability to track what they're doing and keep records and, and analyze those records. I think that is, you know, for a Chinese, you know, a Chinese person who was reasonably tech and tech savvy and politically savvy who might be talking to a foreign journalist, I think they're all well aware of, of that increasing visibility that the party has. And I'm sure that that has an effect on what they're willing to say. And are on in relation to that depressing career path painted out by Jane about returning to the US, for example, and joining Chinese state media. This question from Julian Robertson, how successful is China in using state sponsored media and foreign place journalists to shape perspectives in the US and other nations? As we know, they've spent a lot of money on this. Is it working? Yeah. I don't know if it's working in places like America. I mean, certainly the China Daily, you know, supplement is available in many newspapers. Unfortunately, it has been in mind too. But also available in hotels, the actual printed newspaper, I think it's called China Watch around Capitol Hill. I'm not sure how many people pick that up. I think what has been much more successful is their outreach to places, to audiences that we don't see. So in particular, I think about Middle Eastern journalists who have been invited or journalists from Muslim majority countries who have been invited on these press tours to Xinjiang and to taken into their schools where people are literally singing if you're happy and you know what, clap your hands to them. And that that kind of stuff can be much more effective for them. And if these journalists then go home and write it in their newspapers and say it on their TV to audiences that China is probably thinking is much more easily swayed or that they are a tabula raza for them to lay their narrative onto. I think they look at these kinds of places as much easier to influence than say, yeah, the US or UK or places that they might also be trying. It doesn't mean they're not trying, but I think that they know that there are some limitations there. That's an excellent point. I think during the COVID-19 crisis, a clip propped up a young Chinese woman speaking in Arabic and spreading the same conspiracy theory about the United States bringing the virus to China. Now in my chat box, the question I wanted to ask next has disappeared. I'll ask it from memory. Alexandra Wake from RMIT in Melbourne. She says that Australian universities train a lot of journalists in China and run journalism courses. Is that fact? I think she means the fact that Australian universities do that signal approval for the way that the Chinese government is treating foreign journalists. Jane, I'll put that question to you. I'm sorry. I don't quite understand what the point is. Does the fact that Australian universities train, do journalism training in China and research projects with Chinese journalism scholars? Alexandra Wake says I'm concerned that this sends a signal of our approval of the Chinese government's actions against journalists. Oh, I think the opposite. I think presumably Australian journalism is being, I mean, Australian universities are teaching journalism in China with the idea of giving training in objective reporting, how to go about it, to try and demonstrate a couple of centuries of objective reporting techniques by western newspapers and western media organisations. I don't think that the logic of that doesn't quite follow. So it's a good thing in other words to stay engaged on that level. Definitely. There should be more of it, not less. Now, we've only got a few minutes left. I'll ask Josh this question. Anybody else can comment on it as well. Many people have said the fact that China has basically expelled a lot of the most China-literate journalists in the world, and they're now really free to go out to the rest of the world and report on what China is doing around the world. Josh, is that going to be a fertile new area of reporting and is that going to be damaging to China? I don't know how damaging it's going to be to China. I definitely hope it's going to be fertile because that's the area that I'm sort of by, that I'm going to be forced to concentrate on more. I mean, I'm actually really excited about it. I think it's an area that we haven't, that the foreign media hasn't covered as completely as maybe it deserves. And I think there are a lot of great stories about the way China is changing how the world works. And in some ways, I think the reporting will be, I expect it will be easier because China can't control all those environments the way it does control the party control those environments, the way it controls the environment in China. So yeah, I mean, I'm quite excited about it actually. Anna and then Jane, do you have any comment on that new sort of genre of China reporting? The possibilities for China reporting in Africa, for example, are absolutely astounding. I think it would be just great to know how Belt and Road is really going down in Africa, how Belt and Road is going down in many of the Southeast Asian countries. We've seen some reporting, but I think that would be really interesting. I think, for example, to see how the tech companies are doing in Indonesia, they are doing fantastically, but we haven't seen any real reporting about it. That's for you, Josh. I think reporting about China in the Antarctica and in the Arctic all around the world. And I think also what China is doing in Europe, splitting Europe into two blocks, they're pursuing that very hard. And I think that's really important for how the world is going to shake out in the next couple of years. Really fertile territory. Anna, you have the last word. Well, thank you. Yeah, I absolutely agree. There is lots of fertile ground for reporting on the outside, but I don't think that that should, in an ideal world, that should not be the entirety of our reporting about China, where China is home to 1.4 billion people. And as a foreign correspondent, I want to be there on the ground and talking to people and trying to... The whole thing about being a foreign correspondent is to try to get under the skin of a country and to understand and to be the eyes and ears for your readers in many ways. So I want to report on how Chinese people think about their prospects within their country, their hopes and dreams, all of the reasons why we are foreign correspondents in the first place. So I hope, maybe I'm ending on a naive or optimistic note, but I hope that we would be able to get back and to do a lot more of that, because I mean, you can see there's a lot of hunger from the outside world, from readers and viewers as well, to get some of that granular detail of what life is like in China in the 21st century. Thank you very much. I think it's actually important for even hard and foreign correspondents to retain a touch of naivety. It helps. Look on that note, Josh, Anna and Jane, I really appreciate you giving your time. I'm sorry we didn't get all the questions we've had lots, but I appreciate so many people signing in as well. Thanks very much, and I look forward to seeing you all again on our next, or one of our coming, Lowe Institute Long Distance Live events. Thank you very much.