US President Barack Obama “has been very weak and compromising when facing China’s human rights issues,” Chinese journalist Su Yutong told a Republican-party led US congressional commission hearing on China on Wednesday. Su, based in Germany, is also a human rights advocate and internet activist.
“The Chinese government nowadays dares to reach its long arm to control the world. One factor is the brutal politics since Xi Jinping took power. The other reason is the appeasement from a number of countries,” she said.
The US Congressional-executive Commission on China invited Su to share her experiences under the theme “The Long Arm of China: Global Efforts to Silence Critics from Tiananmen to Today”.
Su described pro-China changes in the Chinese section of German media outlet Deutsche Welle after Peter Limbourg’s arrival. Limbourg is currently the Director General of the German news media outlet.
She also said that human rights conditions in China have continuously worsened since Xi took power.
“Media outlets [such as Voice of America] have now become targets of the Chinese Communist Party’s incessant efforts to control. Chinese embassies and consulates around the world have started to play the role of ministry of propaganda.”
“As a media worker, I urge democratic countries to take notice of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda campaigns overseas and its infiltration and disturbances of freedom of press,” she said.
On August 19, 2014, Su posted on Twitter saying that Deutsche Welle said the Chinese section of the media outlet had a new direction in which Su did not fit. The journalist said that it was because she wrote things that the Chinese Communist Party did not like. Su worked at the German media outlet from 2010 to 2014.
