Chinese state media has reacted gleefully to the Trump administration’s decision to slash government funding to media organisations such as Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA).
The Global Times, a daily English-language tabloid and Chinese Communist party mouthpiece, celebrated the cuts to the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees broadcasters such as VOA and RFA.
“When it comes to China-related reporting, VOA has an appalling track record,” the Global Times said in an editorial on Monday.
“From smearing human rights in China’s Xinjiang … to hyping up disputes in the South China Sea … from fabricating the so-called China virus narrative to promoting the claim of China’s ‘overcapacity’, almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it,” the editorial said.
The Beijing Daily, a newspaper run by the Chinese Communist party (CCP), also published a column commending the cuts.
The schadenfreude comes after US president Donald Trump signed an order gutting USAGM and instructing it to reduce its operations to the bare minimum mandated by the law. He accused VOA of being “radical” and “anti-Trump”.
The order would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda” the White House said in a statement. USAGM employed roughly 3,500 people and had an $886m budget in 2024, according to the agency’s latest report to Congress.
The attempt to close down RFA was “a reward to dictators and despots”, its president, Bay Fang, said, “including the Chinese Communist party, who would like nothing better than to have their influence go unchecked in the information space.
“Today’s notice not only disenfranchises the nearly 60 million people who turn to RFA’s reporting on a weekly basis to learn the truth, but it also benefits America’s adversaries at our own expense.”
RFA’s union said in a statement that the move would “hand a victory to the Chinese Communist party, which harbors a particular disdain for free media and truth” and would “embolden Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime in Pyongyang, where information control reaches unprecedented levels”.
The union said it intends to challenge the decision, adding that a termination of its service would “betray the very principles upon which America stands”.
At VOA, which was set up during the second world war to counter Nazi propaganda, Trump’s decision has seen almost 1,300 staff placed on administrative leave, according to VOA director Mike Abramowitz.
Veteran VOA correspondent Brian Padden said it was “particularly galling” that Elon Musk had accused VOA of anti-American propaganda to justify the shutdown.
“In the course of my reporting, I have been shot at, roughed up, and even nearly decapitated by an exploding helicopter in eastern Ukraine. In 2014, I was harassed by pro-Russian activists or militants in Ukraine who accused me and my VOA TV crew of being agents of pro-American propaganda,” he said in a social media post.
“Both Musk and the Russian militants are wrong. VOA does not do propaganda. VOA reports the news, which includes the perspective of both proponents and critics of the president.”
Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House bureau chief, said in a statement on social media: “I do not know a single VOA journalist who is not fiercely protective of our charter and the editorial independence it provides, especially those of us born in countries where there is no such concept.”
South-east Asia is still reeling from cuts to USAid, which had provided funding to a range of media organisations, including local journalists covering atrocities in war-torn Myanmar.
Former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, an authoritarian who handed power to his son in 2023, also weighed in publicly to praise the Trump administration decision, describing the cuts as a “major contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement, and chaos around the world”.
On the ground in Phnom Penh, not all Cambodian journalists agree.
Sun Narin, who has worked as a contractor for VOA in Cambodia for eight years, described the decision as “dark time for us and journalism in Cambodia”.
“I feel hopeless,” he said. “The situation of our press has been getting worse and worse since the shutdown of a few independent media outlets. VOA is now the only long-term outlet that dares to broadcast critical information to the public. So people have no more choices.”
