China Gets More Airtime Around the World as Voice of America Signs Off
Chinese state media has expanded its reach from Indonesia to Nigeria after Trump’s March order to dismantle U.S. government-funded outlets
July 13, 2025 The Wall Street Journal
Critics say VOA was anti-American, while others argue its absence allows China to dominate global broadcasts, affecting public opinion.An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.
- Trump’s administration dismantled much of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, leading to a reduction in Voice of America broadcasts.View more
For years, one of Indonesia’s most popular news channels hosted a weekly segment for the country’s Chinese diaspora that often featured reports in Mandarin from both the U.S.-government backed Voice of America and China’s state-run television.
Now, since the Trump administration moved to dismantle most of the U.S. Agency for Global Media in March, only the reports from Chinese state media show up.
In his second term, Donald Trump has blown up decades of U.S. foreign-policy efforts, eliminating billions of dollars of foreign aid and influence programs, saying the money was being misused and would be better spent elsewhere. Trump’s March executive order called for the $900 million media agency, which not only funds VOA but also other media outlets, including Radio Free Asia, to do only the things it was legally required to do.
The official overseeing its retrenchment, Kari Lake, accused the agency at a hearing last month of being incompetent, politically biased and itself a national-security threat. Most of the staff has been either fired or put on administrative leave and has filed lawsuits alleging the shutdown of programming was illegal.
In its wake, China’s perspective on global events has begun to dominate broadcasts around the world. In Thailand, for example, VOA’s regular appearances on the state-owned MCOT broadcaster went to a Chinese media outlet.
A tale of two Thai broadcasts: VOA in February, Chinese state media in May
In Africa, another Beijing-backed network, CGTN, announced in March that it would expand its operations on the continent, following others that have already increased their reach there. China Radio International, for example, mainly broadcasts in English but has expanded its coverage with some of Nigeria’s widely spoken languages, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo, to try to reach local audiences.
The departure of Voice of America from Nigeria “created a perceptible void, especially in terms of trusted, independent international news content,” Nigeria’s information minister, Mohammed Idris, said in a written response to questions. While VOA’s coverage emphasized free speech, human rights and open democratic discourse, Chinese media is focused on development success stories, economic cooperation and social stability, he said.
In Ethiopia, Chinese and Ethiopian state media, as well as officials and diplomats from both countries, met in May to promote cooperation between the two countries and launched “China Hour,” a selection of Chinese TV shows, documentaries and cartoons to be broadcast on Ethiopian state television.
“It was an opportunity and [China] had to latch on to it,” said Emeka Umejei, a senior research associate in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Johannesburg.
U.S. priorities compared with China’s in two Nigerian broadcasts
Congress set up Voice of America to provide accurate and objective reporting around the world, including about U.S. policies, and gave it independence from political oversight to enhance its credibility. Conservatives have long complained that this reduced its value as a foreign-policy tool and led to anti-American sentiment in its broadcasts.
In a statement, Lake said, “The Chinese Communist Party is deeply unhappy that President Trump is determined to improve how the U.S. does its international broadcasting,” adding that she believed Voice of America was putting out thousands of hours of outdated content that was “often anti-American and doesn’t align with America’s foreign policy.”
After the March cuts, the former chief editor of Chinese government-backed Global Times, Hu Xijin, described the paralysis of VOA as gratifying. “The Chinese people are happy to see the U.S. anti-China ideological fortress breached from within,” he said on social media.
China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman said that she wouldn’t comment on U.S. domestic policies but that the media outlets’ “blemished track record on China coverage is hardly a secret.”
In some cases, the U.S. pullback has meant cutting off hard-won broadcast abilities that had taken years to establish into some of the most closed societies, including North Korea and Iran, that allowed listeners to hear a U.S. perspective.
In North Korea, the U.S. was broadcasting on television through a South Korean government signal. On the final broadcast on March 15, an anchor moderated a segment that included a panelist from the conservative Heritage Foundation to talk about the U.S.-South Korea relationship and threats posed by China.
It also shut down 10 hours of nightly radio programming that were being broadcast into much of North Korea through a signal hosted by Christian broadcaster Far East Broadcasting Company, or FEBC in South Korea.
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The network has told officials it has gotten outreach from other broadcasters interested in the hours, but was holding on to them in hopes that the U.S. would return, according to people familiar with the message.
While it is illegal in North Korea to listen to outside stations, a 2023 U.S. survey of North Korean defectors, refugees and travelers found that some of them had regularly listened to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia programming.
In China, too, Voice of America had an audience, said Robert Daly, who until April was the director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center. On a recent trip to China, Daly said he was surprised by how many think-tank leaders, university students and professors mentioned they had watched a discussion he had conducted in Mandarin on a Voice of America program with Miles Yu, a China policy adviser to Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
By halting VOA broadcasts, Daly said, “we’re giving up on having an impact on public opinion in China.”
Independent reviews in 2023 and 2024 of Voice of America’s Russian, Chinese and Persian services identified some journalistic shortfalls, according to copies of the reports reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The Chinese service, for example, had inappropriately used a staged video and could use more context in stories, that report said.
But all three reports concluded that the services were generally fair and accurate. The Persian service provided almost equal time, for example, to then-President Joe Biden’s efforts to revive a nuclear deal with Iran and to Republican criticism of it, that report said.
Voice of America was created by the U.S. government in 1942 to push back on Nazi messaging during World War II, broadcasting its first message in German: “The news may be good or bad; we shall tell you the truth.” Its role expanded during the Cold War, when it worked to counter the spread of Communism. Until recently, VOA was transmitting news and information in more than 100 countries in 49 languages.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian claimed that Washington has sent two messages to Tehran regarding the war in Gaza. According to him, the U.S. conveyed that it does not wish to see the conflict escalate and urged the Islamic Republic to exercise restraint. U.S. officials, however, say their messages to Tehran included warnings about Iran’s support for Hamas and other militant groups in the region
— A sample of a 2023 AM broadcast of the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, as heard just south of Tehran.
In April, a federal judge ordered Voice of America to restore some of its programming to fulfill its mandate to “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news,” and the service reinstated some Persian news programming in the aftermath of the Israeli airstrikes on Iran. Trump’s budget for next year proposes eliminating the agency entirely and provides funds only for its shutdown.
Congressional Republicans have supported trimming funding for the agency, but some said they are working to create a smaller outfit that can maintain the U.S. role in spreading accurate information abroad.
“It is absolutely true that it has become bloated,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.), who leads the House Appropriations panel on national security and the State Department that funds the agency. Still, he said, “it can be very, very useful and a very, very important tool of our national interest.”
Write to Aruna Viswanatha at aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com, Alexandra Wexler at alexandra.wexler@wsj.com and Clarence Leong at clarence.leong@wsj.com
U.S.-China Tensions
Trump’s administration dismantled much of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, leading to a reduction in Voice of America broadcasts.
China has expanded its media operations globally, filling the void left by the U.S. in countries like Thailand, Nigeria and Ethiopia.