China expels journalists over ‘racist’ coronavirus article

Three foreign journalists have been ordered out of China over an article read and tagged ‘racist’.

The article which was published on February 3 by Wall Street Journal’s journalists criticized China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

The eviction order was made after several attempts of the Chinese Foreign Ministry to read an apology from the journalists at Wall Street Journal.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Geng Shuang , said the article was “racist” and “denigrated” china’s efforts to combat coronavirus.

He said without mentioning the names of the journalists that, “The Chinese people do not welcome media that publish racists statements and maliciously attacks China.”

However, Wall Street Journal has identified two of the reporters as United State’s citizens – Josh Chin, the deputy bureau chief, and Chao Deng and the third one is an Australian citizen, Philip Wen.

William Lewis, the newspaper’s publisher said, “Our opinion pages regularly publish articles with opinions that people disagree or agree with and it was not our intention to cause offense with the headline in the piece. However, this has clearly caused upset and concern among Chinese people.”

The Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China has called the country’s decision “An extreme and obvious attempt by the Chinese authorities to intimidate foreign news organizations.”