China nudged past Turkey as the leading jailer of journalists this year, a press advocacy group reported in its annual survey, partly because of severe repression in China’s Xinjiang region and Turkey’s eradication of “virtually all independent reporting,” which has left many reporters unemployed, driven into exile or intimidated into self-censorship.

The survey, released Wednesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, also found that authoritarianism, instability and protests in the Middle East had led to a sharp rise in the number of journalists incarcerated in that region. Saudi Arabia and Egypt now share the rank of third-worst jailer of journalists, the group said.

For the fourth consecutive year, at least 250 journalists were imprisoned around the world, the group said in a news release announcing the findings. It said President Xi Jinping of China, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt had shown “no sign of letting up on the critical media.”

It was the first time in four years that Turkey had not claimed the dubious title in the group’s survey, as the number of journalists incarcerated there fell to 47 from 68 in 2018. But the group said the reduction did “not signal an improved situation for the Turkish media.”