China supports Trump’s decision to stop funding Radio Free Asia and Voice of America

Trump’s move to defund VOA has been praised by Chinese state media, which has called it a “lie factory” that propagates misleading information.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to stop providing public financing to Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA), two news organizations that cover authoritarian governments, has been applauded by Chinese official media.

Thousands of workers are impacted by the decision, which detractors believe is a blow to press freedom. Since Friday’s executive order, 1,300 VOA employees have been placed on paid leave.

Beijing’s Global Times ridiculed VOA’s defunding, calling it a “lie factory” and saying it had been “thrown out like a dirty rag.” The publication praised Trump’s move as a long-overdue action and accused VOA of disseminating misleading information about China.

The White House justified the cuts by claiming that they would stop “radical propaganda” from being funded by US taxpayers.

The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which provides funding to VOA, RFA, and Radio Free Europe—all of which have received praise from around the world for their coverage of areas with limited press freedom, such as China, North Korea, Russia, and Cambodia—is the focus of the directive.

Although many countries restrict their transmissions (for example, China forbids VOA), audiences are nevertheless able to receive them using VPNs and shortwave radio. One of the few media channels covering the widespread incarceration of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, a topic Beijing rejects as Western disinformation, is RFA. It has also discussed human rights abuses in Cambodia, where Hun Sen, the country’s former leader, hailed the defunding as a “significant step toward combating false information.”

With accolades for its coverage of China’s COVID-19 response and North Korean defectors, VOA’s reporting has had an especially significant impact. Last year, its podcast about China’s infrequent lockdowns during the 2022 protests gained international attention.

The cuts have been denounced by journalists and proponents of free press. Valdya Baraputri, a VOA journalist who lost her job over the weekend, cautioned that if independent reporting were to be eliminated, false information would flourish.

She said that some colleagues now run the possibility of prosecution if they are compelled to return to their home countries, proving that suspicions of authoritarian control over information are more than simply speculations.

VOA Director Michael Abramowitz cautioned that reducing funding “cripples VOA while adversaries like China, Iran, and Russia invest billions in disinformation,” while the National Press Club referred to the directive as a direct assault on America’s legacy of a free and independent press.

Trump’s action has an effect outside of the US. In order to maintain Radio Free Europe, the Czech Republic has called on the European Union to step in. Bay Fang, the CEO of RFA, promised to contest the changes, claiming they favor authoritarian governments.

In a statement, Fang claimed that sponsoring RFA helps tyrants that seek to dominate the media sphere, such as the Chinese Communist Party. He cautioned that in China, Myanmar, North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, the cuts deny independent news to around 60 million listeners.

Although the action has been praised by Chinese official media, the responses of regular Chinese individuals are yet unknown because of stringent internet restrictions. Outside of China, however, veteran listeners and exiled dissidents have voiced grave concerns.

Chinese dissident Du Wen, who now resides in Belgium, said on X: “VOA and RFA have been a source of hope for exiles, intellectuals, and common people for decades. The dictator’s voice will be the only one heard if the free world remains mute.