It’s time for the State Department to take up the matter of American reporters in China, and Chinese reporters in America.

The work of the American press in China has become so contentious, and so central to our understanding of China’s political picture, that it’s worth stepping back, for a moment, to put a remarkable year in perspective: in the span of twelve months, foreign news organizations including the Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News have ratcheted up their scrutiny of China’s politicians to a level of forensic detail that we have rarely, if ever, seen in foreign correspondence.

In case you missed it during the holidays, each of those outfits ran a story within the last two weeks that drew on Chinese regulatory filings, corporate records, and other sources to describe the personal fortunes and conflicts of interest and self-dealing at the highest ranks of the Party. The stories named names and explained the intricate, often tedious, financial vehicles used to obscure relationships—the kind of microscopic investigative approach that is usually reserved for City Hall reporters rooting through the property records of a rogue alderman and his molls.

Why is this happening now? At bottom, it’s a curious confluence of skill, corruption, and record-keeping. Twenty years ago, most foreign correspondents made their bones on exotic front lines, and rarely ventured into the wilds of business reporting until they came home. But these days the ranks of the foreign press include a number of people who came up reading 10-Ks and bond prospectuses and have the instinct to deploy those skills abroad. At the same time, the increasing sophistication of China’s economy has forced the bureaucracy to create a body of records that, if deciphered correctly, can provide a roadmap of relationships that no human source could easily match. And finally, the scale of corruption in China has grown right along with the economy, creating a target-rich environment.

Aren’t these news organizations just pawns in a Chinese political drama, being fed tips and transcribing “dossiers” of juicy information? That is a common theory among Chinese readers, and it’s understandable, given the sudden profusion of reports, and the way they tend to damage one faction or another. But that’s more fantasy than reality. The truth is that none of these stories, as far as I know, has been the result of a single tip. While that may be the dream of every reporter (and many a reader), investigative journalism, alas, rarely works like that. The Chinese political ether does play a crucial role: compared to twenty-five years ago—when Chinese princelings and officials were also profiting wildly from self-dealing—there is now a stratum of élite consultants and hangers-on, thousands of knowledgeable people on the periphery of Chinese politics who have a reason to push one line or another and are not as isolated and inaccessible as full-fledged Party brass. To a reporter in need of confirmation, or a bit of background on an unfamiliar name, those people are vital.

When this barrage of new forensic reporting began last spring, the government responded by blocking the Web sites of Bloomberg, and then the Times. While Chinese readers intent on seeing the stories can still find them with some hunting, it deters casual readers—and, not incidentally, serves as a vivid threat to other news organizations that might be considering the costs and benefits of those kinds of stories. (Tellingly, Chinese financial institutions have said that they have been advised by officials not to buy Bloomberg’s terminals, a key revenue stream for the company.) In at least one case, a reporter also received death threats from origins unknown.

Which brings us to this week’s news. The Times reported on Monday that Chris Buckley, a seasoned Australian correspondent who rejoined the paper in September after working for Reuters, has been forced to leave mainland China after the government declined to issue him a visa by the end of 2012. “The Times is also waiting for its new Beijing bureau chief, Philip P. Pan, to be accredited. Mr. Pan applied in March, but his visa has not been processed,” the paper reported.

The Times is hoping that these delays are just that, and they are optimistic that they might have it resolved soon. But the visa problems come at the end of a year in which Al Jazeera’s correspondent, Melissa Chan, became the first foreign correspondent expelled from China in thirteen years, for her work on coverage of illegal jails and other sensitive topics. And Andrew Higgins, a correspondent for the Washington Post, was barred from taking up his post in Beijing because Chinese authorities evidently have yet to forgive him for work that got him expelled from China decades ago. (He moved to the Times, and is now based in Europe.)

That is a pattern of pressure that the United States government cannot ignore. These kinds of reports, as well as stories on the downfall of Bo Xilai, have become a vital part of the world’s understanding of China’s political strengths and weaknesses. It informs how the U.S. government understands the men on the other side of its most critical foreign-policy relationship. As Elizabeth M. Lynch, of the China Law & Policy blog, wrote this week, the U.S. has been quiet on the pressure facing American reporters. “In Melissa Chan’s case, the State Department, through a press person, just said that it was ‘disappointed’ with what happened. If ever you wanted to give the Chinese government a signal to continue to harass foreign reporters, such a tepid response was likely the way.”

Some are calling for the U.S. to respond by delaying or preventing Chinese journalists from entering the United States. Last year, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California, introduced the “Chinese Media Reciprocity Act,” which would compel the State Department to deny visas to all but a handful of the some six-hundred-and-fifty Chinese citizens working in the U.S., until China removes the obstacles to Americans. France, I’m told, did the same thing behind the scenes, and the problems disappeared. But this strikes me as unattractive option that risks undermining the very values of free, unfettered reporting that empower the American press in the first place. (For a smart take, see this testimony by Robert L. Daly, an expert on Chinese-U.S. media dealings.)

But the U.S. can do much more, both privately and publicly. In public, the State Department, at a senior level, should strongly object to pressure on American journalists, with the same energy it has directed at obstacles to the free conduct of other American businesses in China, or violations of intellectual-property and human rights. In private, media reciprocity should become a priority, and U.S. officials can remind their counterparts that Beijing’s ambitious plans to expand Chinese media in the United States are vulnerable to a backlash. This problem will not get solved on its own.

Photograph by Peter Parks/AFP/Getty.