U.S. Congress urged Chinese journalists to register as foreign agents

Almaty. November 16. Silkroadnews - The U.S. Congress has demanded from Chinese journalists to register as foreign agents, Reuters reported.
“A report to the U.S. Congress accused Chinese state media entities of involvement in spying and propaganda and said their staff in the United States should be required to register as foreign agents,” the publication reads.
The U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission’s annual report states, while China has tightened restrictions on domestic and foreign media, Chinese state media are rapidly expanding abroad.
The commission, established by Congress in 2000 to monitor the implications for the national security of the U.S.-China trade relations, said the expansion of China’s state media has become a part of a broader collection of information.
The report highlights the rapid growth of the Xinhua news agency and notes that it has offices at the United Nations in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco.
“Xinhua serves some of the functions of an intelligence agency by gathering information and producing classified reports for the Chinese leadership on both domestic and international events,” the report said.
It also quoted data from the U.S.-funded human rights organization Freedom House saying that Xinhua staff and the People’s Daily are not registered under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
The FARA, first adopted in 1938, requires that foreign governments, political parties and their lobbyists in the United States should be registered with the Department of Justice.
The China Daily, an English-language newspaper owned by the government of China and the ruling Communist Party, has already been registered with the FARA.