Joe Biden: The Bull in the China Shop

The vice president creates waves with comments in China, but he was right to make them.
By Elizabeth C. Economy

In the midst of an already diplomatically challenging trip to Japan, China, and South Korea, U.S. vice president Joe Biden managed to make life just that much more difficult for himself. 

The vice president had a number of thorny issues already on his agenda, such as advancing the cause of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, discussing how to make progress on North Korea, trying to get Japan and South Korea on the same page, and most importantly, trying to persuade Beijing to step back and renounce its establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) that overlapped with the pre-established ADIZs of South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan or at the very least, to avoid declaring any new ADIZs.
Despite this full plate of unenviable tasks, Vice President Biden couldn’t resist igniting a mini-media firestorm in Beijing when, in the name of creativity and innovation, he called on young Chinese seeking to visit the United States to “challenge the government, challenge your teachers, challenge religious leaders.” 

He went on to praise the importance of new immigrants to the United States in reinvigorating “the spirit of America” and reinforced that “stamped in the DNA of every American” is an “inherent rejection of orthodoxy.”
At first glance, his remarks seem at best impolitic, at worst downright harmful to the overall cause of furthering cooperation with China. 

Yet, upon further reflection—which the vice president may or may not have undertaken prior to uttering his call to arms—his comments signaled one of the most important policy thrusts of the entire visit.
As China cracks down politically at home and promulgates its own ideals abroad through its Confucius Institutes and state-run media, it matters that U.S. officials reiterate American political values. 

Not doing so in an effort to appease Chinese sensibilities not only is craven but also doesn’t win any favors from Beijing. 

This past week during his own visit to China, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron showered nothing but praise upon his Chinese hosts; in return he earned a scathing editorial in the Global Times and was forced to stand by and watch as one of his journalist countrymen was barred from his press conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

Similarly, when Bloomberg fired star reporter Michael Forsythe in November—apparently for leaking to the New York Times that Bloomberg was kowtowing to Chinese pressure by holding back on the publication of a politically sensitive piece—the news corporation was rewarded with nothing better than visits by Chinese police to their newsrooms in Beijing and Shanghai.
In fact, Vice President Biden took on the issue of Chinese treatment of U.S. journalists and media companies directly in his talks with Chinese president Xi Jinping. 

U.S. media companies have long been stymied in their efforts to report openly and critically on China for fear of reprisals from Beijing. 

As Mark Landler reported in the New York Times, nearly two dozen New York Times and Bloomberg journalists are awaiting accreditation from Beijing; without it they will be expelled, effectively shutting down their China bureaus. 

The question now is whether the U.S. government will take further steps to pressure China on this issue. Would Washington be willing to delay the visas of Chinese journalists? 

Is there an issue of market access that could be advanced through the World Trade Organization? 

It may seem foolish to risk the overall relationship with China for such issues: The ADIZ, for example, represents a more immediate threat to regional security than access to China for U.S. journalists. 

However, the political values the vice president is advancing—transparency, openness, and accountability—in the final analysis are reflected not only in the way that China does business at home but also in how it behaves abroad. 

Biden is right to hold China to account on both fronts.

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China: the must-visit destination for cash-seeking politicians

Cameron is keen to benefit from China's economic power and happy to push aside human rights concerns.
By Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing

David Cameron plays table tennis on his recent three-day visit to China.

This week it was David Cameron playing table tennis, Joe Biden touting democracy, and Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych escaping a little domestic trouble. 

This weekend it is French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault talking nuclear power. 

Next week there will be Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop.
Welcome to Beijing, the must-visit destination for world leaders who need cash or clout. 

Rarely a week goes by without some leading dignitary passing through. 

African leaders come seeking investment or offering land deals. 

Europeans swing by eager for access to Chinese markets (Angela Merkel is almost a regular in Beijing, and Vladimir Putin's first overseas visit after his return to the presidency last year was Beijing).
The principal reason is obvious: the world's second-largest economy is primed to invest abroad, and western nations are in no position to wave it away.
But the promised land has a dark side – for many western leaders, China's economic allure has eclipsed its unscrupulous politics. 

They know that criticizing China's treatment of dissidents, its repressive ethnic policies and its increasing aggression abroad will carry an economic price. 

They're afraid of getting burned.
"I think China obviously uses its growing economic power to send a clear message, or signal, to foreign leaders," said Jingdong Yuan, an expert in international affairs at Sydney university's centre for international security studies. 

"The Chinese government might close some doors, or make things more difficult if they see foreign leaders deliberately challenge their interests."
Analysts have criticized Cameron's three-day trip to Beijing, which ended Wednesday, as little more than an extended apology for meeting the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in 2012, causing Beijing to freeze inter-ministerial Sino-UK ties. 

During the trip, he played table tennis with Chinese schoolchildren, traipsed along Shanghai's bund with a prominent entrepreneur, and opened an account on Sina Weibo, China's most popular microblog.
Yet what Cameron neglected to do is arguably more significant. 

He did not criticize China for its recent unilateral declaration of administrative control over a swath of airspace in the east China sea, bringing territorial disputes with Japan to a boil. 

He did not mention China's human rights record, its environmental degradation, or the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, whom he met with in 2012.
Biden, who left Beijing on Thursday night, did tackle a few tough issues: in meetings with China's president Xi Jinping and premier Li Keqiang, he emphasized that Washington has a "firm position and expectations" on the country's behavior in the east China sea. 

He strongly criticized China for withholding visas from foreign journalists as retaliation for critical coverage, and encouraged a group of US visa applicants to "challenge the government," espousing the rejection of orthodoxy as a traditional American value.
"The Americans still say what they want, regarding human rights in China and Tibet, but western European leaders have been quite effectively intimidated – China has succeeded in teaching them a so-called lesson," said Minxin Pei, an expert on Chinese politics at Claremont McKenna College in California. 

"No leader who dares to have a meeting with the Dalai Lama can escape punishment by Beijing."
Cameron arrived in China with more 130 businesspeople, the UK's largest trade delegation, and signed a raft of deals. 

He pushed for an EU-China free trade agreement and Chinese investment in a British high-speed rail project. He signed a £45m deal to export pig semen to China, to improve the quality of the country's pork.
Yet the outcomes of such vaunted trade deals are often unclear, said Pei – on official visits, both sides' top priorities are ultimately image-related. 

European leaders want to prove that they're leveraging China's economic resources for benefits at home. Chinese leaders wants to show domestic audiences that they occupy the high ground over western, democratic societies.
"I think Chinese leaders are smart enough to know that they're not going to change the suspicion, the ideological hostility towards China in the West," he said. 

"But they're going to squeeze every bit of PR out of these visits that they can."
Jonathan Holslag, a research fellow at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies, said that since president Xi and premier Li took the reins last autumn, they have proven far more straightforward than their predecessors. 

Western politicians have been cowed.
"I think the Chinese have learned to play the game very well – and it's not a game of real power, it's a game of protocol, and it's a game of pretense," he said. 

"This creates a sort of vicious cycle. The Chinese pretend to be powerful, we position ourselves as weaker than we really are, and this allows the Chinese to push harder."

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Fighting Joe Biden vs. kowtowing David Cameron—a lesson from two China trips

By Heather Timmons and Lily Kuo

David Cameron plays ping pong with primary school kids during his trip to Chengdu. 
US vice president Joe Biden spent less than 48 hours in China this week, but managed to criticize its new air defense zone, China’s treatment of foreign journalists, and general lack of democracy. 

In contrast, David Cameron, who was in China for three days this week, played ping pong with school children, opened a Sina Weibo account and publicly avoided controversial topics. 

When he returned home he even said British schools should start teaching Mandarin.
The two visits couldn’t have been more different. 

Still, both approaches reaped scorn from media mouthpieces of the Chinese government as well as the general public, raising the question—What is the right diplomatic way to appeal to China? 

It appears no one really knows.
At the beginning of Biden’s China trip, the vice president was referred to as an “old friend” in China. 

But he made little effort to keep that name, expressing Washington’s ”firm position and expectations” on China’s air defense zone, which covers territories that both the Chinese and Japanese claim.
China’s foreign ministry said that Xi Jinping responded by saying the zone follows international law and that America should take an “objective and fair attitude.”

An editorial in the state-run Global Times further belittled Biden’s address in which he urged students to “challenge” government: “The episode of Biden propagating ‘democracy and freedom’ is just a ‘routine performance’ of any visiting American officials.”
Parts of the Chinese public, once taken with the vice president’s so-called “noodle diplomacy” of earlier visits, were not pleased either and took to Chinese social media to criticize Biden. 

One Sina Weibo user commented (registration required), “This old guy propagates the so-called universal value, and encourages the people to turn against their government… The police should arrest him.” 

Another said (registration required), “He harbors evil intent in his heart.”
Cameron, who arrived with over 100 businesspeople in hopes of drumming up trade and investment, aimed for charming China. 

He strolled along Shanghai’s riverside,chatting with Lisa Pan, vice president of one of Asia’s largest mobile gaming companies, Rekoo. 

While meeting Chinese officials pushed for for an EU-China free trade deal that few in the EU want—as well as Chinese investment in a British high-speed rail project that many in the UK don’t want.
Once again, the Global Times ran a scathing editorial, saying the Cameron administration should acknowledge “that the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese... It is just an old European country apt for travel and study.” 

On his newly opened Sina Weibo account, Cameron offered to answer questions from the Chinese public. He received questions that ranged from mocking—”Do you feel ashamed that London’s title of the foggy capital was stolen by Beijing?” to the offensive—”How many homosexuals are there in the UK?”
Cameron has promised to answer the questions in a video in a few days, but odds are the answers aren’t going to make anyone in China happy either.

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Salesman David Cameron makes up to China

Britain and Western European nations are moving towards a phase in their histories where all remnants of the ‘civilizing mission’ in their foreign policies are being wiped out by the hard realities of economic decline.

By Sreeram Chaulia

After straining relations with China by meeting exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in May 2012, UK Prime Minister David Cameron effected a volte-face this week on an unabashed commercial visit that kept sensitive human rights issues at bay.
Gone is the defiance from Downing Street, which had previously rebutted Chinese demands for an apology after Cameron met the Dalai Lama by asserting that British leaders have the sovereign right to“decide who they meet and when they meet them.” 

Instead of that nonchalance and combative tone, the latest sheepish message from the UK government on the eve of Cameron’s business-centric three-day trip to China was that he had “no plans to meet Tibet’s spiritual leader again".

Correcting errors
The cost of offending China in terms of lost economic opportunities to Britain stared hard and cold at Cameron as he made this about-turn. 

Given that Cameron’s Conservative Party is a big champion of British private sector interests, there must have been immense pressure on him to discard the Dalai Lama and all the high moral ground that Britain and other Western powers occupy while dealing with authoritarian regimes.
The Chinese government had signaled last year that Cameron must “correct the error” about the Dalai Lama or pay a heavy price. 

Amidst rumors that the British premier had been “banned” from entering China, his originally scheduled tour of the country in late 2012 was postponed. 

Between that diplomatic setback and the latest warm reception Cameron got in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, the United Kingdom underwent a major course correction.
However much the British government denies it is jettisoning its advocacy on behalf of self-determination and human rights of Tibetans in China, the absolute silence Cameron has maintained on issues that might irk his hosts in Beijing shows that the UK has decided it can no longer afford to press for ideals in its foreign policy.
When faced with a cold shoulder from a China that Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg acknowledges to be “the great economic superpower of today,” the UK felt that politics of the soul matter less than that of the stomach.

Exports as panacea
Though there is fresh market chatter about a rebound of the British economy from the crisis that began in 2008, Cameron’s austerity and business-friendly policies have undoubtedly worsened the plight and delayed a sound recovery. 

With a domestic macroeconomic policy aimed at hurting the poor and succoring the financial oligarchs in the City of London, revving up consumer spending and confidence has been a Sisyphean task for the British government. 

Hence the onus being placed by Cameron on energetically tapping into the two biggest export markets in the world— China and India.
Both the frequency of high-level engagements with China and India, and the composition of delegations that accompany British leaders when they woo these Asian powerhouses suggest that the UK is banking on them in particular to reach Cameron’s target of achieving exports worth 1 trillion pounds (US$1.64 trillion) a year by the end of the decade.
This week, Cameron brought in tow with what the BBC termed as the “largest UK trade delegation ever to visit China,” with executives of giant banking, pharmaceuticals and energy companies leading the retinue to try and prize open doors for their goods and services to reach the Chinese consumer.

Banking on Chinese reforms
Even as the UK itself is struggling to reorient from an over-financialized economy back to a manufacturing-based one, Cameron and the bevy of businesspersons who traveled with him to China have placed high hopes on an ambitious structural overhaul of the Chinese economy that is being attempted by President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.
The timing of Cameron’s trip would have been helpful to test how deep the economic opportunity lies, following the recent Third Plenum of the 18th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and its promise to undertake “comprehensive and far-reaching reforms.”
Western observers are salivating at the prospect of greater market-based incentives and freedoms being permitted by the CCP. 

Despite being a darling of Western investors, China has not been viewed as a level playing field for foreign players due to the inherent systemic privileges and protections enjoyed by its state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
If the Chinese leadership successfully runs the gauntlet of reforming its economy away from over-dependence on exports and investment and towards consumption by the growing middle classes, Western countries like Britain will smell a chance of a generation of breaking through and cashing in.

Beggars can’t be choosers

In Shanghai, the British Prime Minister defended his drug manufacturing colossus, GlaxoSmithKline, as “a very important, very decent and strong British business”. 

Such comments flew against ongoing high profile prosecution by Chinese authorities of this company for engaging in bribery in the healthcare sector.

Glaxo’s honchos were quoted in The Financial Times that they “hope Mr. Cameron’s intervention will help bolster their case” with the Chinese government. 

But with the CCP leadership intent on teaching a lesson to Western companies that are alleged to be cheating and overcharging Chinese consumers, the pressure will be on Britain to ensure that its corporations behave ethically in a country where foreign businesses are forever under the scanner for misdeeds.
These days, one does not hear British politicians complaining in the usual Western tone of contempt and frustration about the difficulties and obstacles posed to their companies in China’s regulatory snake pit. 

The bilateral relationship is now so asymmetrical in Chinese favor that everything and anything a British Prime Minister says in China is measured by the yardstick of whether it might upset the hosts and ruin the dreams of British companies. 

Presumably, if a Labour Party government were ruling the UK today, it would not have been as amenable to the lobbying interests of British corporations that desperately want a larger share of the Chinese pie.
As the old adage ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ aptly sums it up, an economically struggling UK has lost the leverage to try and hold China to account either on human rights or on the ambience for doing business. Cameron reckons that he might as well shut up, appease the Chinese and get on with bagging whatever economic deals they find it beneficial to grant.
Even a hitherto taboo area like Chinese companies acquiring majority stakes in Britain’s nuclear power plants, which fall under the category of critical national security infrastructure, is now up for grabs. 

Cameron really means it when he proudly proclaims, “no country in the world is more open to Chinese investment than the UK.”

Realist turn of declining powers
It is not unsurprising to see the UK abandoning the human rights and democracy-promotion components of its foreign policy towards China in order to satiate the hunger of British corporations. 

The precedent of British Petroleum (BP) influencing the decision to release the convicted Lockerbie bombing perpetrator, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, in 2009 and send him back to Libya is an open secret.
Britain and Western European nations are moving towards a phase in their histories where all remnants of the ‘civilizing mission’ and the ‘white man’s burden’ in their foreign policies are being wiped out by the hard realities of economic decline.

Salesman David Cameron walks along the Bund with Lisa Pan, vice president of Chinese mobile gaming company Rekoo, in Shanghai December 3, 2013. 

Throughout the Cold War and even after it, Western European powers have embraced and worked with authoritarian regimes even as they put on a grand charade of promoting human rights. 

Now, ground down by a long economic depression, the preaching content in their foreign policies is losing its decibels.
The economic realism which Cameron displayed by promising to “respect” and “understand” China is a sign that the much-touted civilizational values-based leadership of Western Europe has met its nemesis at the hands of a new multipolar world order. 

The rise of China, and of other emerging economies like the BRICS formation, is setting a limit to Western liberalism and forcing a more hybrid international normative environment in which self-interest is speaking louder than altruistic universal principles.

Gateway to Europe or getaway?
One of the carrots the British Prime Minister has dangled on his China visit is that he would deploy his“full political weight” behind a proposed comprehensive China-European Union Free Trade Agreement. 

He even critiqued fellow EU members who “want to shut China off behind a bamboo curtain of trade barriers.” 

This was a jibe at France, Italy, Spain and a few Eastern European countries that are directly competing with Chinese state-subsidized manufacturers.
Cameron’s positioning of Britain as a more “complementary” economy with China, compared to some of its European peers, may be factually correct. 

But it further enables Beijing to divide the EU right down the middle as it did recently in the case of tariffs on Chinese solar panel imports. 

With Germany and Britain seemingly more complaisant towards China, while other European industrial exporting nations are less sanguine about Chinese predatory export policies, the idea that the UK can be a gateway for Chinese businesses to the rest of the European common market is not persuasive.
Right wing political pressures within the UK for a ‘Brixit’, or exit of Britain from the EU, and the heat Cameron’s Conservative Party is facing from the anti-EU UK Independence Party, render his ‘full political weight’ in the EU unappealing to China. 

Cameron’s pledge of a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU if he gets re-elected in 2015 has lost Britain a lot of its attraction in economic terms globally, from the United States all the way to China and India.

Age of salesmanship
Eleanor Byrne-Rosengren, a critic of Cameron’s abandonment of the Tibetan cause, has caustically described him as a “salesman” rather than a “statesman.” 

Why should we even expect a middle power that is predicted to be pushed out of the ranks of the top 10 economies of the world in the near future to exude statesmanship?
The empire on which the sun never set is long gone. 

The idealistic bullhorn which was used for partisan purposes on rival states has now been cast aside. Cameron has brought Britain down from its historic pedestal of moral self-importance to bow to reality.

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Kowtowing Cameron comes under fire in China

"UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese. It is just an old European country apt for travel and study." -- The Global Times

By Kiran Stacey in Shanghai and Demetri Sevastopulo in Hong Kong

David Cameron has suffered a fierce attack from China’s largest Communist party-run newspaper during his visit to the country, undermining the prime minister’s insistence that the relationship between the two nations is “indispensable”.
Speaking at a university in Shanghai, Mr Cameron welcomed the political, cultural and business links between Britain and China. 

But that did not stop the Global Times running an article attacking him for being insincere and irrelevant.
“His visit this time can hardly be the end of the conflict between China and the UK,” said an editorial in the newspaper which falls under the direct control of the propaganda department of the Communist party.
It added: “The Cameron administration should acknowledge that the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese. It is just an old European country apt for travel and study.”
Although the newspaper is associated with hardline nationalist sentiment in the Communist party the editorial would have been agreed at a senior level in Beijing, and gives a glimpse of what lurks behind the warm rhetoric with which Mr Cameron has largely been welcomed by Chinese leaders.
The British prime minister had a veiled attack of his own to make about the Chinese leadership, however. Speaking during a question-and-answer session with students in Shanghai, Mr Cameron went to great lengths to extol the virtues of political leaders having to answer difficult, unscripted questions.
He said: “There are two good things about prime minister’s questions. The first is that it puts the PM on their mettle, it puts them to the test... The public can see you are on your mettle, they can see you’re doing OK.”
He added: “It also makes the government accountable. It means the whole mass of the government has to account for what it does through this one person, the prime minister.”
All of the questions put to Mr Cameron had been scripted and vetted before he answered them. 

He also sent a message to the government in Beijing by joining Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, prompting a flurry of questions from Chinese users asking when President Xi Jinping plans to join Twitter.
The prime minister also put his seal on deals to be signed between British and Chinese companies, once again underlining trade as the primary focus of the visit.
Mr Cameron told students in Shanghai: “There has been criticism from the British media that I am putting too much priority on the economy and business in my visit. But I’m pretty unapologetic. Britain is a trading nation... it is very important we trade more, we invest more.”

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China's 'UK Is No Big Power' Snub To Cameron

As David Cameron hails "indispensable" ties with China, its state media reminds the PM the UK is only fit for "travel and study".
http://news.sky.com

Taxi! David Cameron is bid a speedy farewell from China
Chinese state media has dismissed the UK as "just an old European country" that is only fit for studying and travel amid David Cameron's visit to the country to strengthen ties.
An editorial in China's Global Times, which reflects the thinking and opinions of the country's leadership, questioned Mr Cameron's sincerity.
"Beijing needs to speed up the pace of turning its strength into diplomatic resources and make London pay the price for when it intrudes into the interests of China," it said.
In a highly contemptuous passage, it pointed out that the "UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese".
The tone is sharply at odds with the comments made publicly by China's leaders during Mr Cameron's visit.

Prime Minister Li Keqiang described the UK-China partnership as "indispensable" in comments echoed by Mr Cameron.
During his visit, Mr Cameron told businesses in Shanghai: "My government is committed to working with the Chinese government in a way of mutual respect and understanding to deepen these relations and remove barriers to trade and investment and partnership between our two countries."
It came as the Prime Minister announced that deals worth £5.6bn had been signed during his trip and that 1,500 jobs would be created as a direct result.
The Chinese Prime Minister also indicated that China was ready to help Britain build its high-speed rail line, a project currently being funded wholly by the Government.
Mr Li said: "The two sides have agreed to push for breakthroughs and progress in the co-operation between our enterprises on nuclear power and high-speed rail.
"The Chinese side is willing to not only participate in but also purchase equities and stocks in UK power projects."
Mr Cameron's visit has been dogged by his refusal to raise the issue of China's human rights record, particularly on the subject of Tibet.
The Prime Minister angered Beijing when he met with the Dalai Lama last year, a subject referred to in less than glowing terms in the Global Times editorial.
The piece also questioned how Mr Cameron can be in China talking about improved ties between the two countries when his Navy Chief of Staff was in Japan supporting the country over a territorial dispute with the Chinese

"Perhaps there is no need to talk about 'sincerity' in terms of Sino-British relations," it said.

"What Cameron does is out of his own political interest and the UK's national interest.
"His visit this time can hardly be the end of the conflict between China and the UK.
"Beijing needs to speed up the pace of turning its strength into diplomatic resources and make London pay the price for when it intrudes into the interests of China."
It added: "The Cameron administration should acknowledge that the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese.
"It is just an old European country apt for travel and study. This has gradually become the habitual thought of the Chinese people."
The editorial signs off with the stinging comment: "Finally, let us show courtesy to Cameron and wish him a pleasant trip."
Sky's Asia Correspondent Mark Stone, who is covering the Prime Minister's trip, said: "Today's editorial in China's Global Times gives a clear hint about how Mr Cameron has been received in China so far."

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UK protests after China bars Bloomberg reporter from press event

By Kiran Stacey in Beijing and Demetri Sevastopulo in Hong Kong

Li Keqiang and David Cameron at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

The UK has protested to China after a Bloomberg reporter was barred from a joint press event given by David Cameron, UK prime minister, and Chinese premier Li Keqiang in Beijing on Monday.
In an escalation of Chinese hostility towards the US media company, Rob Hutton, a UK-based reporter accompanying Mr Cameron on his visit to China, was banned at the last minute from attending the event.
“As soon as this issue became apparent on Sunday, we raised our concerns at senior levels and made clear it would be completely inappropriate to exclude journalists from the press statements,” said a spokesman for Mr Cameron.
“When we heard what had happened today we expressed our deep concern to senior Chinese officials about journalists being blocked.”
Bloomberg declined to comment.
This is Mr Cameron’s first trip to China since 2010 and comes after the UK was thrown into the diplomatic deep-freeze in May 2012 following a meeting between the UK prime minister and the Dalai Lama in London.
The trip is intended to mark a thaw in relations, but the latest row threatens to overshadow an otherwise productive trade mission.
The move to block Mr Hutton from the event was the latest example of Beijing punishing Bloomberg for stories published last year that revealed the wealth allegedly accumulated by relatives of Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.
Bloomberg has generally not been invited to official Chinese press conferences since.
Along with the New York Times, which published a similar story about the family of the then Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, Bloomberg has also had trouble securing visas for some of its journalists in China. 

The websites of both news organisations have been blocked in mainland China since they published the stories.
More recently, Bloomberg was accused of axing a story that alleged financial ties between Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man, and the relatives of senior Communist party officials. 

Bloomberg has denied it spiked the story and Mr Wang’s company, Wanda, has previously declined to comment.
People familiar with the situation at Bloomberg told the Financial Times the story was quashed because of concerns that the group’s operations in China would be hurt by publication.
In a conference call with reporters and editors, Matt Winkler, Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief, said the organisation risked being kicked out of China if the story went ahead.
Bloomberg has not denied the comments. 

On Monday, a UK official said the British embassy had been told just hours before Mr Cameron landed in Beijing that Mr Hutton would not be allowed inside the Great Hall of the People, where the joint event was held. 

The official added that the Chinese authorities had made clear it “would not be appropriate” for Mr Hutton to attend.
The rest of the UK political press corps was allowed into the hall, where Mr Li and Mr Cameron announced a range of new investment and trade partnerships.

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David Cameron will be China's strongest advocate in western world

PM calls for new trade agreement as he flies into Beijing hoping to appease leaders angry at Dalai Lama meeting last year
By Nicholas Watt in Beijing and Rowena Mason

David Cameron at Heathrow airport with some of the delegation flying with him to China. 

Britain will act as China's strongest advocate in the west, David Cameron has declared as he flew into Beijing pledging to lead a "dialogue of mutual respect and understanding".
In a sign of Downing Street's determination to appease Beijing, which was furious when Cameron met the Dalai Lama last year, the prime minister said no country was more open to China as he called for a new EU-China free trade agreement.
Writing in the Chinese weekly news magazine Caixin, Cameron said: "Put simply, there is no country in the western world more open to Chinese investment, more able to meet the demands of Chinese consumers, or more willing to make the case for economic openness in the G8, the G20 and the European Union. And there is no country more ready to forge a dialogue of mutual respect and understanding that can address issues of concern and advance our shared interests in the world."
The PM's effusive praise for China came as he landed in Beijing at the head of Britain's largest overseas trade and ministerial mission, designed to restore full relations after his meeting with the Dalai Lama.
The delegation includes the architect Zaha Hadid, ex-England footballer Graeme Le Saux, Arts Council England chair Sir Peter Bazalgette, the chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, Ralf Speth, and Karren Brady, vice-chairman of West Ham United.
But Cameron came under fire from Labour for including figures close to him in the delegation. 

On the trip are his stepfather-in-law, Viscount Astor, representing Silvergate Media; the Tory peer Lord Chadlington, who helped to house the Camerons when the PM first fought the parliamentary seat of Witney; and the Tory donor and peer Lord Leigh of Hurley, of Cavendish Corporate Finance.
Jon Ashworth, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: "Whether it's dinners for donors or jetsetting trips for his friends, David Cameron rarely misses a trick to favour those close to him. Meanwhile, everyone else is offered no respite from the everyday reality of the Tory cost of living crisis."

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Britain wins little reward from China in retreat on Tibet

European countries think Cameron mishandled ties with Dalai Lama

By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing

David Cameron meets the Dalai Lama at the Houses of Parliament

Britain has “sold the store”, “surrendered” and “totally capitulated” in its efforts to get back into the good graces of the Chinese leadership, in the words of several senior Beijing-based diplomats from Asia and Europe.
Diplomats can be a catty bunch and there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy from the representatives of countries that have themselves gone to great lengths to ingratiate themselves with an increasingly powerful China.
But, as Prime Minister David Cameron arrives in Beijing on Monday to begin his first state visit in more than two years, it is hard to avoid the perception that the UK, like most other countries, is struggling to come to terms with a more assertive China.
British diplomats insist the UK’s position has not changed on human rights or on Tibet but European diplomats and human rights groups say London has clearly downgraded these issues over the past year. What Britain has got in return is not entirely clear.
The UK was thrown into the diplomatic deep-freeze in May 2012 after Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister, posed for smiling photos with the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet, during his trip to London.
China reviles the Nobel peace prize-winning lama as a “wolf in monk’s robes” who is bent on Tibetan independence. 

Beijing views any official meetings with him by foreign leaders as part of a Western plot to split China.
The feeling among other European countries, in particular, is that the UK mishandled the initial meeting with the Tibetan leader and then gave in too quickly and completely in its efforts to make up with Beijing.
Mr Cameron’s decision earlier this year to emphasise Britain’s opposition to Tibetan independence in the House of Commons made the UK look weak when it did not yield an immediate thaw. 

Subsequent lobbying to arrange official visits before the end of the year looked over-eager.
The fact that trade and investment between the UK and China did not seem to be affected in the wake of the Dalai Lama meeting has only added to the perception that London is trying too hard.

British exports to China have doubled to £15.9bn in the past five years and last year, even after the May meeting, the UK ranked fourth as a destination for outbound Chinese investment, behind only Hong Kong, the US and Kazakhstan.

That was up from the UK’s position at No 8 in 2011 and No 21 in 2010.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, European diplomats say that British euroscepticism has made it less able to come to a unified position with other European countries when dealing with China on issues such as meeting the Dalai Lama.
That leaves the UK exposed to more pressure from Beijing, which is adept at exploiting rifts and rivalries within the EU.
A wider question can be asked in all of this that has been around for as long as liberal democratic political systems have had foreign policies: does it do anyone any good to lecture authoritarian regimes on universal values?
To Chinese ears, something is faintly ridiculous when the UK, which China blames for the 19th century opium wars, colonialism and “100 years of humiliation”, comes to Beijing with sermons for communist officials about human rights.
As Boris Johnson, London mayor, put it in his inimitable way during a visit to China in October: “I don’t walk into a meeting and say, ‘I say, you chaps, how’s freedom doing?’.”
The business community looks at the potential opportunities in China’s enormous market and asks how useful British finger-wagging is.
“If defending the rights of the Dalai Lama puts the UK behind the French and other countries in the relative pecking order in the eyes of the new Chinese leadership, then that is a big mistake and very depressing for Britain,” one Western financier told the FT this week.
The answer, of course, is that abandoning the defence of universal values in the hopes of more market access or better political relations is an even less effective way of earning the respect of China’s leaders or anyone else.
To be fair, it is not just the UK that appears increasingly reluctant to bring up such issues in the face of China’s growing market demand, power and influence.
Given Beijing’s willingness and ability to inflict diplomatic and economic pain, it is quite likely that the ageing Dalai Lama will never again be granted an audience with a European leader in his lifetime.

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