Responding to China’s crackdown on Bloomberg News and The New York Times, Vice-President Joseph Biden spoke out against China’s actions and even broached the issue in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Later in a speech to Beijing U.S. business leaders, he said, “I believe China will be stronger and more stable and more innovative if it respects universal human rights. Innovation thrives where people breathe freely, speak freely, are able to challenge orthodoxy, where newspapers can report the truth without fear of consequences.”(Reuters, December 5, 2013, by Michael Martina, Ben Blanchard and Sui-Lee Wee)
China had refused to renew the visas of numbers of reporters in response to reporting on stories such as the wealth of family members of former Premier Wen Jiabao and Presidenr Xi Jinping. Biden continued his defense of U.S. journalists by saying to the Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao that reporter Steve Clemons of The Atlantic, who was in the room taking photos with his iPhone, was “a very important man.” (The Hill, December 5, 2013, by Justine Sink)