You're forgetting about the majority of Chinese journalists who do not work for state media. Or from non-English speaking Western countries. Or from non-Western

You're forgetting about the majority of Chinese journalists who do not work for state media. Or from non-English speaking Western countries. Or from non-Western "free democracies". Or from non-free non-democratic countries who're doing good journalism anyway. Most foreign outlets have only a handful of people in the biggest cities and are basing their reporting on other parts of the country on local reporting and social media, so not having any local staff might not even affect the quality of their reporting much.