China has effectively expelled a reporter working for The New York Times by refusing to extend his media credentials, the newspaper said Monday.
The reporter, Chris Buckley, has been forced to leave China, New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson said in a statement.
The newspaper made repeated requests to renew the journalist visa for Buckley, an Australian citizen who recently left Reuters to work for the Times. He has been based in China since 2000, the newspaper said.
China recently blocked the Times' website after the newspaper ran a lenghty story on the wealth accumulated by family members of China's Premier Wen Jiabao. Buckley's byline did not appear on that story.
In May, Melissa Chan, an American working for the satellite channel Al-Jazeera, was also forced to leave China. This was believed to have been the first such case in 14 years.
All these cases are seen as signs of an increasingly hardline stance by China toward the foreign media.
