Radio Free Asia resumes China broadcasts after Congress restores funding cut by Trump

Broadcaster shut down news operations last year after Trump administration’s funding cuts prompted mass layoffs

Radio Free Asia has resumed broadcasting to Chinese audiences in Mandarin, Tibetan and Uyghur languages, months after funding cuts by the Donald Trump administration forced it to shut down.

The resumption came after Congress passed a spending bill to reinstate funding for the USAGM, the agency tasked with overseeing international broadcasters backed by the US government. In addition to Radio Free Asia, the agency oversees Radio Free Europe and Radio Marti.

“RFA is back in business!” CEO Bay Fang said in a LinkedIn post, adding that it was already broadcasting to audiences in Burma and North Korea since December.

The Trump administration last year ordered sweeping cutbacks at state-funded broadcasters, affecting the USAGM and the Voice of America, portraying its decision as an effort to root out “radical propaganda”.

The funding cuts led to mass layoffs and drew bipartisan criticism from US lawmakers, who warned that the move weakened Washington’s global influence, particularly against China.

Ms Fang said in her post on Tuesday that RFA had restarted transmission through private contracts but would need steady Congressional funding to fully rebuild. “This critical work, which we’ve been able to resume due to private contracting with transmission services, is already making waves,” she said.

“RFA’s Uyghur service aired a report over the weekend about how children of detainees in Xinjiang are being forced into manual labour at a young age instead of going to school.”

In October, nearly six months after the funding cuts, RFA had announced that it was shutting down its news operations. But the broadcaster got a new lease of life earlier this month when a bipartisan spending bill approved by Congress and signed into law by Mr Trump gave $653m to the USAGM. Although that figure is lower than allocations in recent years, it far exceeds the $153m previously proposed to wind down the agency.

File. A logo of Radio Free Asia is displayed in its office in Washington, DC, on 15 March 2025 (REUTERS)

Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, also known as Radio Liberty, and Radio Marti were designed to deliver news, from a Western perspective, to audiences in China, North Korea, Russia and Cuba. Together, the networks were estimated to reach around 427 million people worldwide before last year’s cuts.

RFA, which in recent years covered issues like China’s alleged crackdown on Uyghurs, the aftermath of the 2021 military coup in Myanmar and the experiences of defectors from North Korea, had been expanding its reach, with traffic to its website rising by about 20 per cent from 2023 to 2024.

The Chinese embassy in Washington accused RFA of operating with a bias against the Asian nation. “Radio Free Asia has long spread falsehoods and smeared China, and they have a poor record when it comes to reporting on China-related issues,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said. “We hope more media outlets in the US can make objective and fair-minded reports on China and China-US relations.”

Chinese state media had celebrated Mr Trump’s cuts to government-run Voice of America and RFA as a welcome move “eliminating fake news”.

“Voice of America has been paralysed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which has been as vicious to China,” former Global Times editor Hu Xijin had said. “This is such great news.”

Rohit Mahajan, a spokesperson for RFA, said last week they had partnered with private transmission providers to reach listeners in Tibet, North Korea and Myanmar.

He explained that Mandarin audio reports were currently available only through digital platforms, though the outlet intended to restore regular over-the-air broadcasts in the near future.

Programming in Tibetan, Uyghur, Korean, and Burmese languages was being transmitted on short-wave and medium-wave radio, he added, but satellite distribution previously handled through the USAGM was still to be reinstated.