Guwahati: A Chinese reporter who has been termed to be the “last” one in India has reportedly been expelled from India.
As per reports, he was expelled after his visa extension was denied.
According to The Hindu, he went back to China last week and was associated with the Xinhua news agency.
This expulsion signifies the first instance since the normalization of relations in the 1980s that there are no Chinese journalists stationed in India.
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In a reciprocal situation, there is currently only one Indian reporter from the Press Trust of India news agency remaining in Beijing.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry, on June 12, confirmed that the reporter was still operating normally within China but cautioned that countermeasures may be taken if India did not extend the visa of “the last Chinese journalist in the country.”
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The ministry’s spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, highlighted that since 2020, the Indian authorities had been denying review and approval for Chinese journalists’ applications to be stationed in India, while significantly reducing the validity period of Chinese journalists’ visas to as little as one month or three months.
As a result, the number of Chinese journalists stationed in India has plummeted from 14 to just one.