The Chinese government has announced that they will be stripping US journalists from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, Voice of America and Washington Post of their press credentials.

The foreign ministry is requiring American outlets to submit documents detailing “staff members, financial status, operation status and property they owned in China,” and return their press cards within 10 days.

China claims that the ban on reporters comes in response to the US government cutting in half the number of Chinese citizens allowed to work for Beijing’s state-run media in the nation — which was a response to three Wall Street Journal reporters being kicked out of China.

Others, including Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, have suggested the ban is actually a response to China’s attempts to censor the Wuhan doctors who attempted to warn about the dangers of the coronavirus.

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“Beijing is ostensibly responding to limits on the number of Chinese citizens who could work in the US for 5 Chinese state-run news organizations, but a big factor was undoubtedly reporting on China’s disastrous censoring of the Wuhan doctors who tried to warn of the coronavirus,” Roth tweeted.

Beijing is ostensibly responding to limits on the number of Chinese citizens who could work in the US for 5 Chinese state-run news organizations, but a big factor was undoubtedly reporting on China's disastrous censoring of the Wuhan doctors who tried to warn of the coronavirus. — Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) March 17, 2020

China’s foreign ministry said that the ousting is “in response to the unreasonable oppression the Chinese media organizations experience in the US. They are legitimate and justified self-defense in every sense.”

“What the US has done is exclusively targeting Chinese media organizations, and hence driven by a Cold War mentality and ideological bias. It has seriously tarnished the reputation and image of Chinese media organizations, seriously affected their normal operation in the US, and seriously disrupted people-to-people and cultural exchanges between the two countries. It has therefore exposed the hypocrisy of the self-styled advocate of press freedom,” the statement said.

Marty Baron, the executive director of the Washington Post, has condemned the move by China in no uncertain terms.

“We unequivocally condemn any action by China to expel US reporters. The Chinese government’s decision is particularly regrettable because it comes in the midst of an unprecedented global crisis, when clear and reliable information about the international response to covid-19 is essential,” Baron said in a statement posted to Twitter. “Severely limiting the flow of that information, which China now seeks to do, only aggravates the situation.”