Word arrived of a reporter put out of China in nineteen ninety-one. Ambrose: for top-secret party papers he obtained. Pim: put out, like a candle! The Toll Keeper: eighty-six, a correspondent charged with spying after a motorcycle trip; deported. Prudence: decades of it; only the cameras are new.
China's suspicion of foreign reporters is older than Xi Jinping: after 1989 the party accused foreign journalists of spreading 'bourgeois liberalism' and expelled two American reporters for 'obtaining state secrets'; a veteran correspondent was arrested in 1986 and charged with espionage after a motorcycle trip through the hinterland, then deported; the writer himself was expelled in 1991 after obtaining party documents marked top secret; the hunt for spies has only escalated since 2012, and now cameras do much of the watching.
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A Long Way From Deng
New York Times · Dec 9, 2026
