ABSTRACT
Demand for business news about China exploded in the run-up to the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 and continues to be strong as the Chinese economy nears the very top of the global league table. Western financial news providers such as Reuters, Dow Jones, and Bloomberg – all of which had long-standing English-language operations in China – rushed to create Chinese-language offerings for the domestic audience in the 1990s and early part of this century. In 1998, veteran journalist Hu Shuli founded what would later become China’s most famous business publication, Caijing. As economic issues were seen as less “sensitive” than political news by the Chinese Communist Party, business news operations were typically allowed more freedom than general news publishers and broadcasters in their hiring and reporting. That began to change in 2012, however, as President Xi Jinping tightened controls over all media, foreign and domestic, as part of a wider crackdown on freedom of expression.
