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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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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What's at Stake in Bloomberg's China Coverage

The company's refusal to offend the Chinese Communist Party reveals the limitations of "journalistic access."
By Matt Schiavenza

Bloomberg News editor in chief Matt Winkler

Last June, Bloomberg News published a major investigative report into the wealth of the family of Xi Jinping, now China's president. 

The report, written by two well-respected Bloomberg reporters, Mike Forsythe and Shai Oster, tracked the parallel rise of Xi's political career and that of his extended family's business empire, which had accumulated $376 million in assets. 

Though the article did not allege any wrongdoing, its discoveries illuminated the symbiotic relationship between wealth and power in China, where the elite goes to great lengths to conceal the extent of their prosperity.
The report was groundbreaking. 

Widely praised around the industry, Bloomberg News clearly saw the piece as a feather in its cap; a major accomplishment for a still-fledgling news organization. 

When Amanda Bennett, an executive editor for projects and investigations, announced her resignation last week, she cited the investigation into Xi Jinping's family wealth as the work she was "most proud of."
For the Chinese government, which regards the wealth of top officials a taboo subject, the report triggered an immediate reaction: Bloomberg News was censored on the mainland. 

But the blowback didn't end there. 

In addition to the site's censorship, sales of Bloomberg terminal subscriptions, the financial information portals which provide a huge amount of revenue for the company, temporarily slumped in China. 

And the family of Forsythe, one of the journalists responsible for the article, even received death threats.
This year, Forsythe and Oster completed work on a fresh investigation into the connection of wealth and power in China, this time focusing on Wang Jianlin, a real-estate developer and the country's richest citizen. In September, Bloomberg News Managing Editor Jonathan Kaufman told the reporters that the story was "terrific" and added "I am in awe of the way you tracked down and deciphered the financial holdings and the players. It’s a real revelation. Looking forward to pushing it up the line.”
But the next month, progress on the story suddenly came to a halt. 

The reporters learned from an editor that the story would indefinitely be "put on the back burner" for an indefinite amount of time. 

In a report by Edward Wong of The New York Times, Winkler told the reporters that publishing the report would jeopardize Bloomberg's access to China, and compared their situation to Nazi-era Germany, where journalists engaged in self-censorship in order to avoid expulsion from the country.
Winkler, speaking to The New York Times, denied the story and said that the investigation was still ongoing; the delay, he said, reflected a belief that the story was as yet unfit for publication, a claim that seems to belie the editorial enthusiasm for the article. 

But further reporting by the Times' Wong revealed the extent to which Bloomberg ensures that its editorial and business sides do not interfere with each other in China; in every Bloomberg story on China that might offend Beijing, editors insert a code that ensures that the story does not appear on mainland-China Bloomberg terminals.
Meanwhile, though the Times' article did not cite him as a source of information of the spiked story, Bloomberg placed Forsythe on unpaid leave of absence last Tuesday. 

Monday night, on Twitter, he thanked his followers for support.

Thanks everyone for the incredible outpouring of sympathy and support. It has really helped me and my family get through this. 

— Mike Forsythe 傅才德 (@PekingMike)
And yesterday, he announced that his tenure with Bloomberg, which began in 2000, had come to an end.
I can confirm that I have left Bloomberg News. That's all I'm going to say for now. 

— Mike Forsythe 傅才德 (@PekingMike) November 19, 2013
The story, in many ways, is just beginning, and there are many unanswered questions. 

Will Bloomberg ultimately decide to publish a version of the story? 

If so, how will Beijing react? 

But these details obscure the larger point: Given The New York Times' reporting, it appears that the Chinese government has successfully intimidated a major American news organization into killing a story that the government deemed offensive. 

And not just any story, either: a major investigative report on a subject central to any understanding of contemporary China—a subject on which a similar report last year won the Times a Pulitzer Prize.

Meanwhile, George Orwell's famous quote on the purpose of journalism—that it consists of printing what someone else does not want printed—is becoming no less vital in China, where the domestic media lack the wherewithal to do the investigations themselves.

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Another Animated Take on Bloomberg News

By EDWARD WONG

Next Media Animation of Taiwan is staying at the vanguard of coverage of the Bloomberg News self-censorship saga. 

It has posted its second take on the scandal — which, of course, Bloomberg says is not a scandal. 

Top Bloomberg editors have denied killing a story on a Chinese tycoon and his ties to Communist Party leaders for political reasons, despite accounts from several Bloomberg employees that that was the case.
What Bloomberg has undeniably done, though, is suspend a prize-winning reporter, Michael Forsythe, who was working on the story. 

The suspension took place after Bloomberg employees spoke anonymously to The New York Times and other media organizations about the troubled story.
The new video gives a colorful rundown of the latest events, complete with a shot of Mr. Forsythe as the iconic Tank Man from 1989 and the bow-tie-wearing editor in chief of Bloomberg News, Matthew Winkler, driving a tank down Chang’an Avenue in Beijing.
China-based journalists who have been reporting on the uproar over self-censorship also appear in the video, putting them on par, perhaps, with Tiger Woods in the pantheon of Taiwanese animation. 

But there seems to be a broad consensus that the avatar of the Times correspondent bears little resemblance to this reporter.

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Britain Kowtowing to China

In its rush to lure Chinese investment and tourism, the U.K. overlooks human rights and regulatory concerns.
By Yuan Ren

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (second from left) and London Mayor Boris Johnson (second from right) are accompanied by two students on a tour of Peking University.

Last year, London Mayor Boris Johnson heralded the just-completed London 2012 Summer Olympic Games as a triumph for the city and a magnet for tourism and foreign investment.
But this open invitation, apparently, didn’t extend to China.
Two months prior to the Games, the British Ambassador in Beijing, Sebastian Wood, labeled the U.K. “a fortress” to potential Chinese visitors.
This year, the UN World Tourism organization marked Chinese tourists as the single biggest source of income in global tourism: As a group, they spent $102 billion overseas in 2012, more than 30 percent more than visitors from other countries.
But while a single Schengen visa enables tourists to gain entry into most countries in the EU, the U.K. requires a separate visa that costs almost twice as much.
This, Wood argued, deterred wealthy Chinese tourists from visiting the country, and caused the U.K. to lose significant revenue to European neighbors such as France and Germany.
Last month, in an effort to undo the image of this “British fortress” and smooth ruffled feelings over Prime Minister David Cameron’s 2012 meeting with the Dalai Lama, London sent a small delegation on a five-day mission to China.
Among the delegates were London Mayor Boris Johnson and the U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, whose visit began in Beijing on October 14.
In clear contrast to previous high-level trade visits to China, both men steered clear of political controversy, as Mayor Johnson sidestepped human rights questions while Osborne confirmed that “the prime minister is not planning to meet the Dalai Lama.”
Instead, the visit focused exclusively on trade, with both sides expressing hope that the prime minister may visit China later this year.
A key component of the British visit was easing visa regulations for Chinese visitors.
At Peking University, Osborne announced the launch of a 24-hour “super priority” service that would fast-track visas for Chinese business leaders traveling to the U.K. as well as a separate process that would allow certain Chinese travel agents to apply for U.K. visas using the same application as for the Schengen.
Johnson also mentioned the huge income derived from Britain’s 130,000-strong Chinese student population, noting that “London has more Chinese students than any other city on earth, outside China.”
Reminding the audience that Harry Potter’s girlfriend was also a Chinese student, he added: “Let me make this clear to you and to the whole of China: There is no limit to the number of Chinese who can study in Britain.”
The statement, given recent events, was striking: Last year the U.K. announced a policy to reduce annual net immigration from outside the EU, shortening the length of stay for overseas students.
And while previous visas offered students the right to seek employment in the U.K. for two years, now only those who graduate with job offers can stay.
Why, then, is the U.K. suddenly reversing course with China?

***

China has made significant investments in British industry and infrastructure.
These include shares in London’s water supply as well as a project to expand Heathrow Airport, the latter worth £800 million ($1.28 billion) and expected to create 16,000 jobs.
To further promote trade, the two countries struck a deal allowing direct trading between their respective currencies, based on an 80 billion yuan ($12.7 billion) quota for London-based firms to invest in China.
The U.K. is now the only foreign country to manage China’s tightly controlled currency.
The U.K. has even eased regulations for Chinese banks to set up branches in London, relaxing rules brought in as a result of the financial crisis that required most foreign banks to set up “subsidiaries” that operate under tighter controls of the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA).
Such “counterproductive” measures, as one journalist called them in the South Morning China Post, reportedly pushed several Chinese banks to switch operations to Luxembourg.
While many in the banking industry saw the news as undermining the PRA’s independence, others, such as TheCityUK, an independent membership body promoting financial services, “strongly welcomed” the announcements, which it saw as “potentially increasing funding for U.K. infrastructure and investment in other sectors.”
Even more contentious is China’s foray into Britain’s nuclear power industry.
During his visit George Osborne announced that Chinese state-owned companies would take a minority share in the controversial Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in southwest England, the first to be constructed in the U.K in 20 years.
As is the current government’s policy on new nuclear projects, the station will be completely privately funded, led by the French government-owned company EDF Energy.
Osborne also revealed a longer-term plan for the Chinese to become “majority owners” in future power stations built in the U.K., which he said will be paid for with “Chinese money,” to ensure “lower energy bills for families in Britain.”
While some, like Ed Davey, the U.K. Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change called China’s support “vital” to the country’s energy prospects, others, like Isabel Hilton, Editor of China Dialogue, have questioned whether Britain is just a pawn in China becoming “the world's next big nuclear exporter.”
Questions over safety risks for Britain also point to China’s record on corruption and weak regulatory frameworks. 
John Large, the U.K. government’s advisor on nuclear energy, raised concerns that China is “rooted in a government system without independent [safety] regulators.”
But such anxieties were dismissed by the Chancellor, who emphasized during his visit that the Chinese role in nuclear projects will be “subject to British safety rules leased by the British,” and that China is “a very straightforward and transparent partner.”
But is this realistic?
Last month, the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International placed China at the bottom of the BRICS club of emerging markets for being the least open and most prone to corruption. 
Of the 11 companies given “0” ratings for transparency, nine were from China, including Huawei Technologies, a private firm that has been entangled in allegations of spying for the Chinese government. Huawei plans to invest $200 million in building a research and development center in the U.K., as announced by George Osborne during his visit to its headquarters in Shenzhen.
Does China’s increasing stake in U.K. businesses and industry presents tangible risks for the U.K.?
While countries like the U.S. have barred Huawei from its telecoms industry over security concerns, the U.K. has continued to allow Huawei to integrate its technology into British telecommunications systems, even though the U.K. Parliament's security watchdog warned in June this year that the company’s alleged links to the Communist Party were “concerning” and questioned whether “Huawei’s intentions are strictly commercial or are more political.”
This latest trip in China, labeled by some as “China mania,” has led some observers of the Sino-British relationship to warn that London was kowtowing to the Chinese by making an unprecedented number of compromises.
Will Hutton, writing in the Guardian, called Osborne and Johnson “wide-eyed and innocent” for making “one-sided economic concessions.”
In spite of these concerns, Johnson and Osborne’s delegation insists that Britain’s economic development takes priority.
But while David Cameron’s last visit to China in 2011 emphasized that “a dialogue covering human rights” was a key part of how “[the China-UK] relationship should work,” the absence of such conversations in the latest trip indicates that the U.K. is giving up its moral high ground for closer economic ties with China, as France and Germany have done.
In contrast to the U.K. media frenzy, the Johnson-Osborne trip elicited less sentiment on the Chinese side, where reporting has been more positive.
According to writer Jonathan Fenby, China’s coverage highlights the U.K. as “just one of many” business opportunities for China and “far from a leading destination for Chinese investment,” lagging behind the likes of Germany, with its $200 billion dollars worth of investment.
While the success of the Sino-British trade relationship hinges on a balance of political tact and strict regulatory checks with strong accountability, the U.K. government’s latest move signals the end to British integrity. 
Jonathan Mirsky, a former East Asia editor of the Times writing in the New York Review of Books, sees the new relationship as a sell-out, on what he calls “precisely the things that have made Britain great: freedom, democracy and above all, speaking truth to power.”

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At Bloomberg, Special Code Keeps Some Articles Out of China

By EDWARD WONG

A man walks past a screen showing broadcasts of the Bloomberg television channel in Hong Kong.

It is called Code 204. 

Editors at Bloomberg News append it to an article to ensure that it does not appear on Bloomberg financial data and news terminals in mainland China. 

Little known outside Bloomberg, the system has been in place for more than two years, and it is used regularly to keep articles on Chinese politics and social issues away from the eyes of powerful people in China who might be offended, Bloomberg employees say.
That coding is just one way that Bloomberg tries to navigate delicate issues of Chinese control of foreign news media operations here. 

The fact that Bloomberg L.P., the parent company and one of the world’s largest and wealthiest news organizations, sells terminals in China that publish both financial data and news articles means that Bloomberg is more than just a news-gathering agency. 

It is also a news distributor. 

And that makes Bloomberg’s relationship with the government and Communist Party especially complicated.
The Chinese government closely monitors the use of financial data terminals, a market dominated by Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters that has been the subject of political and commercial tension in China for two decades.
Worldwide, Bloomberg’s terminals are the main revenue generator for the parent company, which also operates a website and a television network. 

In China, Bloomberg takes a more cautious approach to disseminating news on the terminals than on any other outlet, which explains Code 204.
“A lot of people rationalize it and say it’s not self-censorship,” one employee said. 

“I disagree with them.”
Ty Trippet, a Bloomberg spokesman, declined to comment.
That coding was used well before news reports about accusations that Bloomberg suppressed other articles on China emerged last week. 

An article in The New York Times quoted unnamed Bloomberg employees as saying that Matthew Winkler, the longtime editor in chief, indicated that he had decided not to publish two investigative articles by reporters in the Hong Kong bureau that looked at ties among Chinese tycoons, the families of political leaders and foreign banks. 

The Financial Times and Next Media Animation have also independently reported details of the story.
In a conference call with four journalists in Hong Kong on Oct. 29, Mr. Winkler defended his decision to withhold one of the articles by arguing that Bloomberg would be expelled from China if the article were published, employees said.
Mr. Winkler  declined to comment on the conference call.
Bloomberg incurred the wrath of the Communist Party after it published an investigative article in June 2012 on the family wealth of Xi Jinping, the new party chief. 

Sales in China of Bloomberg terminal subscriptions, which cost more than $20,000 per year, slowed afterward. 

Chinese officials had ordered some state enterprises not to subscribe, apparently in retaliation. 

Bloomberg’s website has been blocked on Chinese servers since, and its news bureaus on the mainland have been unable to obtain residency visas for new journalists.
Terminal sales in China are believed to make up only a fraction of Bloomberg’s global revenues, but the company would like to increase that. 

Bloomberg also worries about preserving its ability to gather news and financial information in China for global subscribers who buy its terminals to track commerce in the world’s second-largest economy. 

Since publication of the Xi article, Bloomberg journalists have sometimes been denied access to news conferences in China, so they lag behind their competitors in issuing alerts on their terminals — in a business in which a few seconds can determine the success of a trade.
For years, Bloomberg has been careful about the news it distributes on its terminals in mainland China. Senior Bloomberg managers added Code 204 to the editing system in early 2011, around the time that Chinese officials were growing anxious over calls for Chinese citizens to start a Jasmine Revolution, which never materialized. 

Editors routinely apply Code 204 to coverage of Chinese politics and general news, not just investigative blockbusters. 

“It’s very loosely applied,” one person said. 

Some editors justify Code 204 by arguing that the Chinese government allows Bloomberg to publish only financial news and data on the terminals, not political articles or other information, employees said.
“Their rationale is that we’re operating under the laws of mainland China,” said one employee, who, like others at Bloomberg, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired. 

The employee added that those editors defending Code 204 say Bloomberg has a license that allows the terminals to offer what is “narrowly defined as economic news.”
Like Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg has official permits from China to distribute financial information and report on a range of topics, employees said. 

A license from the State Council Information Office allows Bloomberg to disseminate financial information to terminal subscribers. 

Separately, the Foreign Ministry accredits Bloomberg’s news bureaus and journalists in China.
A central question for Bloomberg editors, then, is whether some stories written by the news bureaus should be kept off the terminals to conform with a rigid definition of the state council license. 

Some inside Bloomberg argue that many stories classified as Code 204 could actually be distributed on the terminals under the license because they contain information important for doing business. 

For example, articles about political figures and their family backgrounds or financial ties provide information that can be useful to the businesses that subscribe to the terminals.
Editors append Code 204 case by case. 

Those with the power to apply codes and route articles are said to be “turned on.”
But this kind of self-regulation has failed to keep Bloomberg out of trouble in China, as the fallout from the Xi family wealth article has shown.
Several current and former employees of Reuters said they were unaware of any similar function on the Reuters financial data software platform. 

Subscribers to a comprehensive Reuters terminal plan in China can see raw financial data as well as all the articles that appear on the Reuters news wire, which also has a Chinese-language service, employees said.
Wang Feng, the former editor of the Chinese-language service and now online editor of The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, said he recently discussed with former Reuters colleagues whether news articles could be coded to keep them off the Reuters terminals in mainland China. 

“It technically would not even have been possible to do that at Reuters,” he said.
A Reuters spokeswoman, Barb Burg, declined to comment.
Since the 1990s, the Chinese government has had an uneasy relationship with foreign financial data services, for both ideological and commercial reasons. 

In 1996, Xinhua, the state news agency, tried to monopolize the business by controlling or driving out Reuters and Dow Jones, then the two dominant data providers. (Bloomberg had only a small China presence then.) 

Reuters and Dow Jones waged an international lobbying campaign that forced Xinhua to back off in 1997, according to James McGregor, a business executive and former journalist who ran Dow Jones in China at the time. 

Xinhua and the Chinese government tried the same thing in 2006, but backed down after the United States and the European Union filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization.
In an interview, Mr. McGregor said the foreign financial data companies did have leverage over China and could fight intimidation, since Chinese businesses rely on the terminals for day-to-day — even second-to-second — transactions. 

“I think it’s impossible to push Bloomberg off the table here because they have a robust and important offering to Chinese traders, and Chinese traders want to be part of the global market,” he said.
Similarly, news agencies have some leverage, despite the visa denials and threats, he added. 

“Does China really not want news coverage?” he said.

“China’s part of the world, and they have to be part of the news world.”

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The Deep Insecurity Behind China's Attacks on the Foreign Press

By Joshua Keating
An Amnesty International member covers her mouth during an event in Sydney on July 30, 2008 as part of a campaign to end internet censorship in China.

Just as I was leaving China, two stories came out underlying the increasing frustration of foreign news agencies trying to cover the country. 

The New York Times reported that Bloomberg had made the decision not to run an investigative report on the political influence of a Chinese entrepreneur over fears that the agency might be expelled from the country entirely.
Bloomberg has been at odds with the Chinese government since running an investigation on President Xi Jinping’s personal wealth last year. 

The Bloomberg website is currently blocked in China, though the company’s television station and electronic terminal service are still available.
China also rejected the visa application of veteran China reporter Paul Mooney who had been waiting eight months to begin a new assignment, reporting on the country for Reuters. 

The rejection follows similar actions against reporters from the Times and Al Jazeera.
They also come shortly after the release of a widely-publicized report by the Center for International Media Assistance and the National Endowment for Democracy on “the various ways in which Chinese Communist Party (CCP) information controls extend beyond mainland China’s borders.” 

These included visa denials, the blocking of offending websites, punishing the business interests of new outlets that publish unflattering stories, and physically intimidating foreign reporters as well as their Chinese employees and sources. 

It’s now evident that the loosening of restrictions in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics has been reversed.
During my trip, my fellow U.S. journalists and I encountered frequent complaints from the Chinese officials and reporters we met with that foreign press coverage of China is too negative. 

Even if that were true – from corruption, to pollution, to human rights abuses, there’s a lot of bad stuff happening in China that should be reported on – the ease with which the country seems to have its feelings hurt seems absurd for one of the world’s most powerful countries. 

If you’re going to be a superpower, people are going to write nasty things about you.
As the CIMA/NED report notes, China’s economic growth and increased global influence have been accompanied by “a deep sense of CCP insecurity.” 

This insecurity definitely seemed evident in the over-the-top response to a recent Wall Street Journal editorial calling for the U.S. to recognize Japan’s claims to the Senkaku islands. 

If the U.S. State Department issued a condemnation every time a foreign newspaper wrote something it didn’t like about U.S. foreign policy, it would have time for little else.
And given the small number of people in China who read the English-language websites of publications like the New York Times and Bloomberg, and the fact that people who are interested in getting the information they publish have many other ways of finding it, blocking them just makes China look very petty without accomplishing very much.
Inflicting punishment on foreign news outlets also isn’t a great longterm strategy to improve the tone of coverage of your country. 

Beijing might have gotten the Bloomberg piece spiked – reports on corruption among the country’s senior leaders seem to be a red line — but given that the price for it was a front-page New York Times article in which Bloomberg editor Matthew Winkler is quoted on a conference call comparing the country’s censorship regime to Nazi Germany, it’s hard to say they’re winning the battle of perception. 

If you don't let foreign outlets cover your country, you don't get to complain that their coverage is too negative.

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