Kicked Out of China

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Note: This episode contains strong language. The New York Times’s reporters working in China have been expelled by the Chinese government, alongside reporters covering China for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Today, we speak with one of our correspondents about his experience learning that he would have to leave the place he has called home for the last decade — and about the last story he reported before he left. Guest: Paul Mozur, the Asia technology reporter for The New York Times, formerly based in Shanghai. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: China’s announcement of the journalists’ expulsion came weeks after President Trump limited the number of Chinese citizens who can work in the United States for five state-run Chinese news organizations.While the Chinese government’s official statement cited diplomatic tension as the reasoning for the expulsion, state media outlets pointed to our critical reporting of China’s mass detention of Muslims, government surveillance and its response to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan as reasons for the move.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From The New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is The Daily.
0:10.4	Today. In the middle of the pandemic, China has expelled
0:16.3	journalists from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and The New York Times.
0:21.1	One of those reporters, my colleague Paul Moser, recounts his final days there.
0:31.9	It's Thursday, April 16.
0:38.4	Paul Moser, tell us about these text messages that you got a few weeks ago.
0:43.2	So it's late, probably a bit after midnight, and I am in Shanghai in my apartment, where I've
0:50.4	lived for the past three years. And I'm doing that thing where you're trying to read in bed,
0:56.6	but the phone keeps buzzing. And I've told myself this is the last time I'm going to check,
1:03.2	and I look at the phone for the first time ever when I've picked up my phone while I'm trying to
1:07.5	sleep. It's actually relevant. And so what I see is one of my colleagues in our sort of private
1:13.6	chat group for covering the coronavirus sends a message. And it's a memo from the Ministry of
1:19.5	Foreign Affairs in China. And the first bit, it's all kind of stock language, it's not too big a deal.
1:26.6	But then I get to point two, and I read point two, and I have to read it again.
1:31.7	Because what it says in this roundabout way is basically that the entire staff of the New York
1:37.6	Times, all of our reporters in China have to leave the country in just a few weeks. We've effectively
1:44.3	been expelled. It's not just us that it's been thrown out. It's also a number of reporters with
1:51.9	the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. So this is the greater part of the US press
1:57.7	corps in China being tossed. So you're on your phone in bed looking at a memo that basically says
2:06.1	your job in China is over. Yes, our time is up. As you're looking at this, what are your
2:13.8	colleagues and you saying to each other as you're digesting this information from the Chinese government?
2:21.1	You know, I think I'm the first to weigh in and I say, let me be the first to say this
	...

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