RFA and VOA Shutdown: The Erosion of U.S. Soft Power in Southeast Asia
Picture: BONNIE CASH/AFP via Getty Images
In an article by Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), Japhet Quitzon discusses the U.S. funding cuts to Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA), and highlights their critical role in providing independent news in Southeast Asia and China, and how their decline benefits authoritarian regimes while weakening U.S. soft power in the region.
While the domestic legal battle for the fate of RFA, VOA, and their associated services is underway, a different battle is unfolding in the Southeast Asian information sphere. The two outlets’ vital role in presenting differing viewpoints from tightly controlled state-owned media in the more press-restrictive Southeast Asian countries and China made them key contributors to accurate news reporting, spreading awareness of issues that would normally be censored or severely restricted by state-controlled media. Their emphasis on traditional U.S. values, together with their uncensored reporting, earned both outlets the ire of more repressive regimes throughout the region. Opponents in the information sphere portrayed the two outlets as mouthpieces for U.S. propaganda, a negative association that proved hard to shake.
As such, the shutdown of the outlets was met with praise from Chinese outlets, with the state-backed Global Times decrying it as a “lie factory.” RFA was characterized as “malicious” toward China, with glee at the shutdown spreading throughout Chinese social media. Former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen praised its closure, citing the outlet as a significant contributor to fake news, disinformation, distortions, and incitement of chaos. The funding cuts have slashed RFA’s staffing by 75 percent; meanwhile, 1,300 VOA employees were also placed on leave. With the defunding of RFA and VOA, the United States risks ceding more ground to malign actors, such as China and Russia, eager to fill the void left by the United States’ increasingly unpredictable foreign policy.
