Wow and the Chinese government made allegations that BBC is "Fake News" in its dispute with BBC News.
The announcement, which arrived with the Lunar New Year holiday in China, followed recent disputes between Chinese officials and BBC News.
It also came just a week after Britain’s media regulator pulled the Chinese state-run television channel CGTN off British airwaves because of alleged errors in an application to transfer its license to another company.
In December, BBC News produced a report that alleged the forced labor of ethnic minority Uighurs in China’s cotton industry in Xinjiang. Chinese state media bristled at the work, calling it “fake news” and accusing the BBC of political bias. “Far from being fake news, our evidence, along with the post-publication propaganda designed to undermine it, is proof of a coordinated effort to control the narrative, extending from the shadowy minders in unmarked cars, all the way up to the national government,” John Sudworth, one of the team who reported the story, later wrote.