New York Times reporter Austin Ramzy forced to leave China

Austin Ramzy, the Beijing-based New York Times journalist, was forced to leave China after Beijing refused to grant him a journalist work visa.

His expulsion will be a blow to the US-China relations and a signal that China is growing impatient with the western media’s coverage of high level corruption. Chinese government officials have offered a technical reason on why Ramzy was not granted a journalist visa following his appointment to the NYT bureau in the middle of last year. However Ramzy’s colleagues and an NYT senior staff member have made clear they believe the real reason is a vendetta by the government against the Times for its coverage of corruption in the top echelons of the Communist party. The paper won a Pulitzer Prize for a 2012 expose of the wealth acquired by family members of Wen Jiabao, the then prime minister.