BEIJING, China — China on Thursday told Japan to “rein in its journalists” after Tokyo lodged a protest over Beijing blocking a Japanese reporter from covering a meeting between top diplomats from the two countries. On Wednesday, the Chinese foreign ministry excluded a reporter from the Sankei Shimbun— a Japanese conservative daily critical of China — from a media pool covering the start of a meeting between China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Japanese vice foreign minister Takeo Akiba. Other Japanese media covering the event in Beijing then boycotted the pool coverage in protest. ADVERTISEMENTJapan’s top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga confirmed Tokyo had lodged a protest with China over the incident. But Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying dismissed the criticism, saying Beijing had been “wrongfully accused.”“The Japanese government needs to rein in its own journalists,” she told reporters.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer August 30, 2018 10:30 UTC