A little local difficulty

By G.E. | BEIJING

FOREIGN correspondents in China are often asked back home how much they are affected by censorship in China. The reflexive answer has long been that censorship in China is for local journalists; foreigners are free to write about whatever they please.

But that answer, while usually still true, is now subject to scrutiny. Over the weekend camereports that Bloomberg had quashed a project looking into the connections between one of China’s richest businessmen and its top leaders, purportedly because the reporters would be kicked out of China if the piece were published. Then came word that Paul Mooney, one of the longest-serving and most accomplished foreign journalists in China, renowned for his unflinching coverage of human-rights abuses, had been denied a visa to return as a correspondent for Reuters.

The Bloomberg story is still developing, and the editor-in-chief denies that the project is dead. Indeed it would not be surprising if the report were published eventually, following the allegation of self-censorship (which emerged with this cartoon). The case of Mr Mooney, though, is closed. Chinese authorities rarely reject outright a veteran journalist’s application for re-entry; they even more rarely change their mind (Reuters has said it will find Mr Mooney a post elsewhere).

In both cases the message is clear and unsettling. China is pressing foreign news organisations more than ever to pull punches in their coverage. And it appears to be getting harder to resist such demands. In 2012 both Bloomberg and the New York Times defied pressure not to publish exposés about the wealth of the family members of China's top leaders, including Xi Jinping, now president, and Wen Jiabao, then the prime minister. Authorities responded by punishing both organisations. Their websites have been blocked in China, and Bloomberg has lost some of its lucrative terminal business.

Those facts are fairly well known. Less familiar is that both companies have also been effectively blocked from taking on new staff or replacing current employees in China. Chinese authorities appear loth to expel current journalists working for such high-profile employers, especially those reporters who actually broke the wealth exposés, as this would make international headlines. They instead use forms of pressure that attract little attention, such as delaying visa requests interminably, while making clear that the media outlet’s future coverage should be “more objective”.

Abroad, the Chinese government has also become more aggressive in pressurising global media organisations to hold off publishing or broadcasting certain reports or documentaries, such as those concerning Tibet. In October a report by Freedom House, an American organisation, tallied up China’s efforts at censoring global media. It noted that China does this more now, partly because information travels more freely back into China, and is often translated—either officially by news organisations with Chinese-language websites, or unofficially by independent parties (as are many of The Economist’s articles).

More important, though, is the fact that the Chinese government has, thus far, paid almost no price for this strategy. Some China watchers say that this sort of bullying backfires, that it is a soft-power blunder. Some suggest China should show its confidence by letting in all journalists and letting them report freely. But the Chinese Communist Party has bigger image concerns, especially domestically, than its treatment of a few foreign journalists.

Save the occasional headline, the Chinese strategy can be viewed as successful at times, and in ways that few appreciate. The Chinese-language websites of Western news organisations, for example, face the choice of self-censoring on some stories, or being blocked and hurting their business in China. The uncensored Chinese-language site of the New York Times has been fully blocked since its report on the Wen family’s wealth. Will China's punitive approach affect the newspaper’s future coverage in subtle ways?

And the New York Times and Bloomberg are two of the most powerful media companies in the world. What other choices might news organisations feel compelled to make that go unnoticed? Western journalists and their bosses might think twice about what kind of sensitive stories to pursue. After all, it is easier to be “more objective”. Mr Mooney notes that Western editors can tire of human-rights stories anyway, for non-political reasons. There are plenty of other stories to report on in China, after all. The pressure to focus on those is likely only to grow.