China threatens retaliation over UK TV license cancellation

BEIJING (AP) — China on Friday threatened to retaliate after British regulators stripped China’s state TV channel of its U.K. broadcasting license, a decision based on technical issues but rooted in complaints about its role in persecuting critics of the ruling Communist Party.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters that British media watchdog Ofcom had acted on “political grounds based on ideological bias, politicizing technical issues, seriously harming the survival of Chinese media and severely interfering with normal exchanges between the two countries.”

“We urge the U.K. to immediately stop political manipulation and correct its mistakes. China reserves the right to make the necessary response to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese media," Wang said at a daily briefing.

In its decision issued Thursday, Ofcom said it revoked the U.K. license for China Global Television Network, or CGTN, an international English-language satellite news channel, because of a lack of editorial control and links to China’s Communist Party.

CGTN had been available on free and pay TV in the U.K. Regulators started looking into the station after receiving a complaint from human rights group Safeguard Defenders that called for an investigation into its ownership.

Ofcom is also continuing to investigate a number of additional complaints that the station violated rules on fairness and accuracy, including the broadcasting of alleged forced confessions by a former British Consulate employee in Hong Kong and a British corporate investigator and longtime government critic, Gui Minhai, whose whereabouts are now unknown.

In a tweet, Gui's daughter Angela Gui said, “Finally, five years after first airing a forced confession by my father #GuiMinhai in the UK, Ofcom has revoked CGTN’s license...