The new action treats the news organizations as part of China’s diplomatic missions whose activities are regulated under the Foreign Missions Act. Enacted in 1982, the law is a legal tool intended to ensure equitable treatment for American diplomats serving in countries around the world, often under onerous government restrictions. It deals with such things as providing visas, acquiring property and extending diplomatic immunity in matters of criminal wrongdoing.

Last fall, for example, the State Department began requiring Chinese diplomats to give notice before they have any meetings with local or state officials and with educational and research institutions. That move came in retaliation for similar Chinese government rules imposed on American diplomats. But the five Chinese news agencies whose employees are working in the United States will be exempted from that requirement, the State Department officials said.

American officials have become much more suspicious of the activities of Chinese diplomats and have increased scrutiny of their travels and meetings. In September, the State Department secretly expelled two Chinese Embassy officials in Washington after they were caught driving on a sensitive military base in Virginia with their wives. The expulsions appear to be the first of Chinese diplomats suspected of espionage in more than 30 years.

It was not clear why the Trump administration decided to act now on the Chinese news organizations, although the administration official said the move reflected long-simmering frustration over the forbearance shown to Chinese official media in the United States, despite evidence that the organizations serve as a front for intelligence agencies.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressionally mandated agency, warned in its report in 2017 that “Chinese intelligence-gathering and information-warfare efforts are known to involve staff of Chinese state-run media organizations.”

In recent years, a growing number of American officials have discussed imposing strict visa reciprocity on Chinese news organizations after Beijing increasingly began limiting visas and residence permits issued to foreign journalists and curtailed the lengths of those documents.

Unlike Russia’s information campaigns in the United States, which have been artfully tailored to sow distrust in the American government and the democratic system, China’s media efforts in the United States have tended to reflect more traditional forms of government propaganda. Reports on CGTN or in China Daily, for example, are more likely to extol the country’s economic and diplomatic achievements than to denigrate American democracy.