text: Fourth, you have to be ready for all your preparatory work to be for naught and for China to sanction you. China has expelled reporters in the past, it can and has caused monumental and even insurmountable bureaucratic headaches for others, it has caused economic harm by restricting sales and blocking websites. But China, with its 5,000 years of history, is excellent at playing the long game, and if you want to be in China that is the game you must play. Ignore quarterly results. Ignore annual profit. Concentrate on the long term effects on your reputation and standing, and on the eventual need for China to be more open.
  Fifth, you need to get your stakeholders involved. You should be writing the tough stories because your readers need them. The banks and brokerages who subscribe to Bloomberg should be demanding more of the investigative reports because they help them make decisions. The exchanges who list Chinese IPOs should be demanding more of the reports because they bring needed transparency to the market. And if your readers aren’t demanding the stories, you’re either writing them wrong or you’re not working with your readers closely enough.
  Sixth, you must be fair and acknowledge that China’s reflexive paranoia that foreign reporting on China is out to “get” the People’s Republic can sometimes be stimulated by the stories themselves. If you go after the intricate relationship between business and government in China without going after the intricate relationship between business and government in the United States with the same fervor, you are doing no one any favors. If you write China stories loaded with snark and without empathy for China’s point of view, you merely play into perpetuating an unhealthy antagonism instead of the healthy skepticism and drive for the truth that good journalism must be.
  Well, I see two crucial aspects to the question of where journalism in China (and on China) goes from here. First, there is the health and long-term development of Chinese news media. Second, there is foreign news coverage of China. In the past, these were two mostly distinct spheres, and the Party leadership felt it could treat them as such. The Party's priority was ensuring social and political stability at home by controlling, or "guiding," domestic public opinion -- which meant keeping a choke-hold on Chinese news media. Foreign news coverage was mostly a nettlesome question of China's image overseas, and after 2007 of its "soft power." In fact, most of the truly probing coverage was being done against immense odds by the Chinese media -- counter-intuitive for some, but true. Enabled by the explosive growth of social media in China, including platforms like Sina Weibo, The New York Times and Bloomberg stories shattered the wall between these two spheres. I remember watching David Barboza's story spreading like wildfire on Sina Weibo. Facts, images, translations. It became a domestic news story, shedding unwelcome light on the business associations of one of the country's most loved and respected political leaders. Now we've seen quite clearly China's response to this shift. The authorities are trying to stop future coverage of this kind by poisoning the roots—denying visas to veteran reporters like Chris Buckley, and forcing Bloomberg to make a disgusting choice between strong journalism and a core business for which China is a major market. Another issue here is a revolution in available data and information for journalists about China, and a growing number of China lifers (as opposed to parachute journalists) who are able to parse that information and reveal its significance. I think we'll continue to see great reporting on China, but the costs of that reporting will have to be shared in new and innovative ways. I think the recent work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is just one example.
  Facing similar conflicts between editorial values and business interests, the two leading American media companies made completely different choices. In public discussions, Bloomberg has become a villain, smearing the cherished values of the free press and independent journalism, while The New York Times is held up as a shining light of objectivity. Why?