China revoked the press credentials of three Wall Street Journal reporters based in Beijing, the first time the Chinese government has expelled multiple journalists simultaneously from one international news organization since the country began re-engaging with the world in the post-Mao era.

China’s Foreign Ministry said the move Wednesday was punishment for a recent opinion piece published by the Journal.

Deputy Bureau Chief Josh Chin and reporter Chao Deng, both U.S. nationals, as well as reporter Philip Wen, an Australian national, were ordered to leave the country within five days, said Jonathan Cheng, the Journal’s China bureau chief.

The expulsions by China’s Foreign Ministry followed widespread public anger at the headline on the Feb. 3 opinion piece, which referred to China as “the real sick man of Asia.” The ministry and state-media outlets had repeatedly called attention to the headline in statements and posts on social media and had threatened unspecified consequences.

“Regrettably, what the WSJ has done so far is nothing but parrying and dodging its responsibility,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a daily news briefing Wednesday. “The Chinese people do not welcome those media that speak racially discriminatory language and maliciously slander and attack China.”

The three journalists work for the Journal’s news operation. The Journal operates with a strict separation between its news and opinion staffs.

William Lewis, the Journal’s publisher and chief executive of its parent company, Dow Jones, said he was disappointed by the decision to expel the journalists and asked the Foreign Ministry to reconsider.

“This opinion piece was published independently from the WSJ newsroom and none of the journalists being expelled had any involvement with it,” Mr. Lewis said.

“Our opinion pages regularly publish articles with opinions that people disagree—or agree—with and it was not our intention to cause offense with the headline on the piece,” Mr. Lewis said. “However, this has clearly caused upset and concern amongst the Chinese people, which we regret.”

Dow Jones is owned by News Corp.

In a note to news staff, Editor in Chief Matt Murray said the Journal would push to reverse the expulsions and continue its work covering China’s rise as a global force.

“Let no one doubt that The Wall Street Journal remains fully committed to covering China, with the highest standards of news reporting,” Mr. Murray wrote. “We will continue to write about China, without fear or favor and with no agenda but the truth.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized China’s action, saying: “The United States condemns China’s expulsion of three Wall Street Journal foreign correspondents. Mature, responsible countries understand that a free press reports facts and expresses opinions. The correct response is to present counter arguments, not restrict speech. The United States hopes that the Chinese people will enjoy the same access to accurate information and freedom of speech that Americans enjoy.”

China is battling a fast-spreading coronavirus, as well as questions from Chinese citizens and some global health experts about Beijing’s handling of the epidemic, which has included the lockdown of much of Hubei province, with a population of nearly 60 million. Public anger at a perceived lack of transparency surrounding the coronavirus has exploded online, overwhelming the country’s censorship apparatus.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called on China to restore the press credentials of the Journal reporters immediately.

“China’s expulsion of three accredited correspondents in reaction to what it sees as an offensive headline in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal makes the country appear less like a confident rising power than a thin-skinned bully,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, in Washington, D.C.

“During a global health emergency, it is counterproductive for the Chinese authorities to be limiting the flow of news and information,” Mr. Butler added.

In August, the Chinese government didn’t renew press credentials for Chun Han Wong, a Beijing-based Journal correspondent who co-wrote a news article on a cousin of Chinese President Xi Jinping whose activities were being scrutinized by Australian law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Mr. Xi’s private life and those of his relatives are considered sensitive by Chinese authorities. The Foreign Ministry had cautioned the Journal at the time against publishing the article, warning of unspecified consequences.

Mr. Wong was the first China-based Journal reporter to have his credentials denied since the newspaper opened a bureau in Beijing in 1980.

Beijing has taken a more combative stance with the foreign media in recent years, as Mr. Xi’s government has exerted greater control over information and reasserted the Communist Party’s influence over citizens’ lives.

It has declined to renew the credentials of several reporters, but China hasn’t expelled a credentialed foreign correspondent since 1998.

Chinese authorities expelled two American reporters simultaneously in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, though they worked for different news organizations. John Pomfret was a correspondent for the Associated Press while Alan Pessin was Beijing bureau chief for Voice of America.

The simultaneous expulsions of Journal reporters Wednesday marks “an unprecedented form of retaliation against foreign journalists in China,” the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said. “The action taken against the Journal correspondents is an extreme and obvious attempt by the Chinese authorities to intimidate foreign news organizations by taking retribution against their China-based correspondents.”

Censorship has been more strictly imposed on domestic news outlets and social media, and authorities have strengthened internet firewalls designed to keep Chinese people from accessing foreign reporting that Beijing deems objectionable, including the Journal’s website.

On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department said it had decided to identify the U.S. operations of state-run Chinese news outlets as foreign missions akin to embassies or consulates, the latest in a series of moves designed to pressure China’s Communist Party into loosening controls on diplomats and foreign media.

Employees of those news organizations will now be required to register with the State Department as consular staff, though their reporting activities won’t be curtailed, U.S. officials said.

Mr. Geng, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, called that change “totally unjustified and unacceptable” and warned of unspecified repercussions.

The phrase “sick man of Asia” was used by both outsiders and Chinese intellectuals to refer to a weakened China exploited by European powers and Japan in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This period is now described in Chinese history textbooks as the “century of humiliation.”

The Journal’s use of the phrase in the headline on an opinion column by Hudson Institute scholar Walter Russell Mead that referred to the coronavirus epidemic in China, sparked waves of angry commentary on social media in China and elsewhere.

Mr. Chin, the Journal’s 43-year-old deputy bureau chief, has worked for the newspaper in various roles since 2008 and in recent years covered cybersecurity, law and human rights. A team he led won a 2018 Gerald Loeb Award for its coverage of the Communist Party’s pioneering embrace of digital surveillance.

Ms. Deng, 32, joined the Journal in 2012 and has reported from Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing. Her recent areas of focus included China’s economy and finance, and the trade war between the U.S. and China. Most recently, Ms. Deng has been on assignment in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the coronavirus epidemic originated late last year.

Mr. Wen, 35, started at the Journal in 2019 and has been reporting on Chinese politics. He co-wrote the article with Mr. Wong on the cousin of Mr. Xi whose activities were being scrutinized by Australian law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.

All three have reported on the Chinese Communist Party’s mass surveillance and detention of Uighur Muslims in the country’s far western Xinjiang region.