Says right in their about page they are under a govt. mandate. The local language pages also have this information.
> Radio Free Asia operates under a Congressional mandate to deliver uncensored, domestic news and information to China, Tibet, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, among other places in Asia with poor media environments and few, if any, free speech protections. All broadcasts are solely in local languages and dialects, which include Mandarin, Tibetan, Cantonese, Uyghur, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, and Korean.
Edit: A discussion like this wouldn't even happen inside China.
Well one can argue that the Shanghai police was also quite transparent about it, given the following:
> On May 21, a branch of the Shanghai police posted a notice online seeking bids from private contractors for what is known among Chinese officialdom as public opinion management.
I see what you mean, but it is only evident when you actually know of RF as a political entity. It's not as evident when they operate under localised brands posing as "just small local news".
In Russia RF's news outlets were the ones who resisted the foreign funded media explicit labeling regulations the most and were the slowest to comply and start labeling their content explicitly.
What I mean is their degree of transparency is quite debatable and raises some red flags.
Says right in their about page they are under a govt. mandate. The local language pages also have this information.
> Radio Free Asia operates under a Congressional mandate to deliver uncensored, domestic news and information to China, Tibet, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, among other places in Asia with poor media environments and few, if any, free speech protections. All broadcasts are solely in local languages and dialects, which include Mandarin, Tibetan, Cantonese, Uyghur, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, and Korean.
Edit: A discussion like this wouldn't even happen inside China.