As the world’s media gears up to cover the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, press freedom in China is deteriorating at a “breakneck speed,” says a Beijing-based journalist group. 

Foreign journalists in China are facing “unprecedented hurdles” while reporting in and on the country, according to a report released on Monday by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC), which surveyed 127 journalists representing news organizations from 30 countries and regions.

State-sponsored intimidation tactics and surveillance against journalists have become commonplace—including online harassment and cyber hacking, and physical assaults and visa denials, the FCCC report says. In March, BBC correspondent John Sudworth—who spent nine years in China—left Beijing for Taiwan after coming under intense government pressure over his investigative reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic and Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region. 

Chinese authorities have also detained Haze Fan, a Chinese citizen working for Bloomberg, and Cheng Lei, an Australian reporter with Chinese state broadcaster CGTN, for more than a year. China is the biggest incarcerator of journalists, according to a December 2021 report by advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

Earlier this year, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced the FCCC as an illegal organization operating in the country and criticized the group for its lack of principles.  
 

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