The New York Times's Beijing correspondent, Chris Buckley, on Monday became the latest foreign journalist to be forced to leave China, after authorities declined to extend his visa.
"He and his family left China today," a colleague of Buckley told dpa. The 45-year-old Australian, his wife and daughter were bound for Hong Kong.
Buckley's visa problems come after the Times published reports of the wealth accumulated by the family of Premier Wen Jiabao, which prompted authorities to block the Times' website in China.
Authorities did not link the two issues, sources told dpa. The newspaper's Beijing bureau chief Philip Pan has meanwhile been waiting for his visa for several months.
Buckley, who has been working as a journalist in China since 2000, is a former China analyst for the news agency Reuters who switched to the Times in September. Refusal to renew a visa is the equivalent of a deportation, one European diplomat said.
The New York Times urged Chinese authorities to process Buckley's visa "as quickly as possible" so he can return to Beijing.
"I also hope that Phil Pan, whose application for journalist credentials has been pending for months, will also be issued a visa to serve as our bureau chief in Beijing," executive editor Jill Abramson said. In May, US journalist Melissa Chan, who reported for broadcaster Al Jazeera, was forced to leave China.
Buckley's problems were a surprise because the visa for the journalist who wrote the investigative stories, David Barboza in Shanghai, was renewed without problems.
On Sunday, a story by Barboza unveiled how relatives of a top Chinese regulator, Dai Xianglong, who was also head of China's central bank, profited from buying shares in a company that the official regulated.