Akkineni family meets PM Modi at TDP office in parliament
Naga Chaitanya, Sobhita Dhulipala, and the Akkineni family meet Prime Minister Modi at the TDP office in Parliament, sharing a memorable moment captured in a photo.
China on Tuesday threatened to launch an “appropriate response” after Washington cracked down on four more Chinese state media outlets in the United States.
Beijing decried Monday’s move by the US State Department as “bare-faced political suppression of Chinese media” which “further exposes the hypocrisy of the so-called freedom of speech and press which the US likes to flaunt”.
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“We strongly urge the US to reject this Cold War mindset and ideological bias… otherwise China will have no choice but to make an appropriate response,” said foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a routine briefing, reported news agency AFP.
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An escalating media row has added to tensions between the two superpowers, with China expelling more than a dozen US journalists from the country this year.
The US has designated top state-run Chinese media houses as “foreign missions”, terming them as “propaganda” outlets “controlled” by the ruling Communist Party of China, a move that could further escalate tensions between the two countries. The four Chinese media outlets designated as foreign missions on Monday are China Central Television, China News Service, the People’s Daily and the Global Times, taking the total number to nine.
“These entities are not independent news organisations. They are effectively controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, also known as propaganda outlets,” US State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said.
“These nine entities all meet the definition of a foreign mission under the Foreign Missions Act, which is to say that they are “substantially owned or effectively controlled” by a foreign government.
In this case, they are effectively controlled by the government of the People’s Republic of China,” Ms Ortagus said.
This follows the February 18 designation of Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily Distribution Corporation and Hai Tian Development USA.
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