After being put on hold, China to issue press credentials to foreign journalists

Photo by Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

With the threat of foreign journalists in China losing their visas -- and thus possibly their jobs -- at the end of 2013, China has decided it will renew foreign journalists' press cards. The Wall Street Journal reported that some correspondents from Bloomberg News and The New York Times have received their press credentials for 2014, even though those news sites' coverage of the wealth of the families of top leaders have lead to their sites being blocked in China since last year.

China did not release how many press cards were issued, but Edward Wong of the New York Times tweeted that only some reporters received the cards.

No NYT journalists in China have gotten their 2014 residence visas yet. Some but not all have new press cards in hand.

— Edward Wong (@comradewong) December 19, 2013

Chinese press cards are the prerequisite before the government issues visas to work and stay in the country, and if a journalist is not granted a card, they will need to leave the country.

China's reluctance to hand out visas to the press is traced to its displeasure with Washington over matters of foreign policy.

The New Yorker reported earlier in December that three foreign journalists have been denied Chinese visas over the past two years. Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera English was the first foreign correspondent in thirteen years to be expelled from the country.

H/T Joshua Peguero