WASHINGTON ¨C Radio Free Asia (RFA) has resumed broadcasts to people in China, its CEO said on Tuesday, after cuts by U.S. President Donald Trump¡¯s administration last year largely forced the government-funded outlet to cease operations.

RFA and its sister outlets, including ?Voice of America, had for years been financed with funding approved by the ?U.S. Congress ?and overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

Last ?year, Kari Lake, a former news anchor appointed by Trump as acting CEO of USAGM, terminated their grants, alleging waste of taxpayer money and anti-Trump bias. Critics ?decried the move, which led to mass layoffs, as ceding ground to China and other U.S. ?adversaries.

¡°We are proud to have resumed broadcasting to audiences in China in Mandarin, Tibetan, and Uyghur, providing some of the world¡¯s only independent reporting on ?these regions in the local languages,¡± ?RFA¡¯s president and CEO, Bay Fang, wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

She said the ability to restart the broadcasts was ¡°due ?to private contracting with transmission ?services,¡± without providing details, but added that rebuilding the ?network would require consistently receiving newly approved congressional funding.

A bipartisan spending bill that Trump ?signed ?into law earlier in February included $653 million for USAGM, which oversees RFA, VOA and other government-funded outlets.

That is down from the $867 million appropriated for USAGM each of the past two years, but more than the $153 million Trump requested that Congress ?provide to the shuttered agency.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on RFA¡¯s resumption of broadcasting. Chinese state media had praised last year¡¯s cuts. U.S. lawmakers of both major parties had said Trump¡¯s drive to dismantle the news outlets diminished Washington¡¯s ?clout globally ?at a time when Beijing is expanding its own sphere ?of influence.

Rights activists say that RFA has for decades shone light on abuses by China and ?other authoritarian countries, raising awareness about the plight of oppressed minorities such as China¡¯s Uyghur Muslims.

On Friday, RFA spokesperson Rohit Mahajan said that the outlet had contracted with private companies to broadcast to audiences in Tibet, North Korea and Myanmar.

Mahajan ?said the outlet¡¯s Mandarin audio content currently is online only, but the aim is to resume regular broadcasts over airwaves soon. Its Tibetan, Uyghur, Korean and Burmese radio programming airs over short- and medium-wave frequencies. Previous satellite transmissions via USAGM have not resumed yet, he said.