Trump signed an order last week freezing Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe and other outlets as part of his sweeping cuts to federal government spending.
RFA was created to provide reporting to China, North Korea and other countries in the region with heavily restricted press.
It has reported extensively in recent years on issues highly sensitive to Beijing authorities and other autocratic leaders in Asia.
Asked about Trump's decision during a daily news briefing, China's foreign ministry said it did not comment on domestic policies of the US government.
But, said spokeswoman Mao Ning: "I think it is no secret that some of the US media you mentioned have a notorious track record in reporting on China."
In an editorial, state-backed nationalist tabloid Global Times went further -- describing Voice of America as a "lie factory".
"The so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag," it said.
"The demonising narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughingstock of the times," it added.
China has frequently criticised Western media reporting on the country as "biased" and it heavily restricts the operations of domestic news outlets.
Thorny topics covered by RFA and its fellow outlets included China's alleged large-scale human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as the crackdown on democratic activists in Hong Kong.
Notably, Radio Free Asia's reporting is published in a wide range of languages spoken in China, including Tibetan and Uyghur as well as Mandarin and Cantonese.
Related news stories are heavily censored in China's domestic media environment -- and foreign reports on the subjects are blocked online.
The outlets had also long been critical of the influential former leader of Cambodia Hun Sen.
He welcomed the move to cut their funding, praising Trump for "his courage to lead the world in combating fake news, starting with news outlets funded by the US government".
Hun Sen, who ruled Cambodia with an iron fist for nearly four decades and shut down multiple independent media outlets, has been the subject of critical reporting by VOA and Radio Free Asia.
In 2020, Beijing ordered several US media outlets -- including VOA -- to declare in writing their staff, finances, operations and real estate in China.
The decree was part of a media row between Washington and Beijing that saw more than a dozen journalists working for US media expelled from China.
China, Russia eager to fill void as Trump axes US-funded media
Washington (AFP) Mar 18, 2025 - As President Donald Trump moves to axe Voice of America and other US-funded media, China and Russia are eager to fill the void.
The targeting of VOA, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia not only freezes some of the most dogged reporting on countries with heavily restricted media, but it comes after years of concerted efforts by Beijing and Moscow to promote their own worldview on the global media landscape.
Trump issued an executive order Friday to pare down the nearly $1 billion US Agency for Global Media, with hundreds of journalists swiftly put on leave or fired, in his latest sweeping cut to the federal government.
Lisa Curtis, who was a senior official on the National Security Council in Trump's first term and serves as board chair of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, formed in the Cold War to reach behind the Iron Curtain, said that closing the service "will actually help our adversaries."
"Countries like China, Russia and Iran are investing hundreds of millions of dollars pumping out anti-American propaganda and disinformation," she said.
"Why would the Trump administration want to disarm itself in this environment?" she asked.
She said a pro bono legal team was challenging the authority to cut the funding, which was appropriated by Congress.
- Aggressive marketing -
A 2022 study by Freedom House, the democracy promotion research group which has also seen US government funding slashed by Trump, found that China has ramped up its media footprint globally with a strategy of offering free or low-cost content.
The report acknowledged that China had found success in part as it provided what media outlets needed, such as equipment.
In contrast to China's often formal official media, Russia has aggressively challenged the West through government-run Sputnik and TT.
After Europeans banned the outlets in the wake of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia has set its sights on Africa, including through social media campaigns targeting Western health projects, according to the Global Engagement Center, the State Department's anti-disinformation arm that also recently closed.
After smaller budget cuts in 2023 in Britain, the BBC ended long-time radio services including in Arabic. The BBC director general later said that Russian media took over the BBC Arabic radio frequency in Lebanon.
Sarah Cook, a researcher who led the 2022 Freedom House report, said it was not as simple as China taking over from VOA, which did not enter into local contracts in the same way that Chinese media does.
But a very different sort of journalism could dominate if China rather than the United States funds reporting in the developing world.
"Even if Chinese state media are doing it, the content is completely different. It's all pro-government, even pro-local government," she said.
- 'Lie factory' -
After Trump's move, China's Global Times hailed the end of "lie factory" VOA, and Sputnik said VOA and RFE were behind "fakes" about Russia's alleged massacre of civilians in Kyiv's Bucha suburb.
Kari Lake, a firebrand Trump supporter brought to the US Agency for Global Media, described it as a "giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer" that is not "salvageable."
Trump often rails against media coverage of him, and his administration has called government-funded media outdated, as private news sources are readily available.
But US-funded broadcasters ran in dozens of languages and often relied on exiles with unique sourcing in their homelands.
Curtis pointed to a figure that Persian-language Radio Farda reached 10 percent of Iran's adult population every week and to original reporting, including a 2016 RFE/RL story on a Chinese military base in Tajikistan.
Radio Free Asia broadcasts in the Tibetan and Uyghur languages, a unique outlet for journalists from the minority groups to operate outside the constraints both of the Chinese government and of commercial pressure.
"They are going to cover the stories that don't get picked up by other outlets, because big media cover more broadly and don't necessarily have as many native speakers employed," said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund who has researched Chinese media policies.
Ohlberg said China began a global hiring spree in media during the 2008 financial crisis as it saw the struggles of Western commercial outlets, which have long angered Beijing with critical coverage.
"They saw an opportunity -- let's offer our narrative," she said.
"That expansion is going to continue, and it would have regardless of this decision.
"It just makes it easier for the narrative to take hold as there are now fewer alternatives."
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