Following a controversial headline in the Wall Street Journal, and an overhaul of state-media visa requirements in the US, Beijing began expelling top journalists from newspapers including the New York Times and Washington Post.

As the world waits with bated breath to see if the Beijing bureau survives, we look back at the long and glorious history of the New York Times’s reporting in China.

1852 The Times publishes its debut dispatch from China: ‘In Peking, Xiangfeng Emperor mulls reform’

1859 The first full-time Peking correspondent, Wilbur Bartholomew III, is appointed. He speaks fluent Mandarin and Cantonese, is conversational in seven regional dialects, and an inveterate pederast

1860 Bartholomew has his whiskers badly singed when a case of baijiu allegedly explodes as he takes his evening constitutional near a local bordello. Peking, Bartholomew writes, “is descending into utter chaos”

1872 It is reported that the offices of the NYT in China are going through 48 kilos of penicillin a month

1900 The Times’s China office packs its bags and books it as the Boxer Revolution nears Peking, but continues to file quality copy from the vantage of a steamship moored in Canton

1910 January’s dispatch contains a column by Sir Thomas Fryedman (‘In Peking, Cixi Plots Brave Reform’), in which Fryedman, having spoken with a rickshaw driver, reveals the Dowager Empress is currently mulling a blueprint of far-reaching economic and political overhauls for the ailing Qing Dynasty

1911 The Qing collapses, plunging the country into chaos. The Times interviews a waiter at Shanghai’s Long Bar, in the mistaken belief that he is Sun Yat-sen

1912 Wilbur Bartholomew IV is awarded a prestigious Rosenheim Award for his series of detailed reports into warlord Yuan Shikai’s family wealth (there is no suggestion of any impropriety on the part of Yuan). Later, Bartholomew questions Yuan’s continuing attempts to crown himself emperor, asking: ‘In China, will Emperor Yuan prove a reformer?’

1937 The Times’s office packs its bags and books it as the Japanese occupy Peking, but continues to file quality copy from the vantage of a US aircraft carrier in the Pacific

1945 Victory! The Times notes that the streets of Peking are filled with celebration at the Japanese defeat but warns that, without urgent reform, all may be in vain for Chiang Kai-shek

1949 The Times’s office packs its bags and books it after the Communists conquer Peking, but continues to file quality copy from the vantage of a steamship moored on the Yangtze

1950 The Times establishes new digs in Hong Kong, bringing penetrating insight and analysis from the vantage of a cocktail bar near the border

1968 The Times retracts a report claiming that The Beatles are to play the Great Hall of the People

1969 A misguided Swinging Sixties Special reports that “all across the nation, hemlines are lowering and the east is reddening, as Red Guard Mania grips the country’s youth. With a cultural revolution in full swing, is Beijing the new Haight-Ashbury?”

1976 Mao Zedong nears death and the Times predict imminent collapse — or reform. The city of Tangshan promptly collapses during an earthquake

1977 Supreme Leader Deng Xiaoping promises deep reform but the Times gracefully declines to take full credit

1980 The Times re-establishes its Peking office inside a heavily guarded compound next to the Ministry of State Security

1989 The Times’s Peking office packs its bags and books it following the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but continues to file quality copy from the vantage of a four-star suite in Taipei

2003 On a business trip to Shanghai, Times columnist Thomas Friedman catches a cab; China commentary will never be the same again

2008 As Olympics fever reaches its peak, the Times goes with a lifestyle feature revealing that Beijing’s Gulou is “the new Brooklyn.” The newspaper continues to break this story in 2009, 2010, 2011, and twice more in 2012

2013 The Times’s Peking office packs its bags and books it in anticipation of Xi Jinping’s new Communist Revolution, but promises to continue filing quality copy from the vantage of a skyscraper in Times Square

2014 The Times returns in time to uncover the truth about Flight MA370, which disappeared en route to Beijing. Alas, thousands of other Chinese who disappear the same year go sadly unreported

2018 Following Xi Jinping’s presidential announcement, the Times announces plans to remove term limits for its worst columnists, to provide “balance”

2019 A Times delegation, led by publisher Marty Sulzberger, executive editor Dean Baquet, and columnist Thomas Friedman, arrives in Beijing to discuss press freedom and synergy

2020 After Times reporters are expelled in the fallout of a controversial WSJ op-ed, the Times finally vows to overhaul its own Opinion Section, eliminating the most pointless columnists. David Brooks is said to be “speechless.” Thomas Friedman warns “the next six month will be crucial.”

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