As the article on Mr. Xi’s family was published, in June 2012, Chinese officials ordered the Bloomberg News website blocked. Today, it remains inaccessible on Chinese servers. No Bloomberg journalist trying to enter China on a new long-term assignment has received a residency visa.

Most important for the larger Bloomberg company’s bottom line, financial news terminal subscriptions, which cost more than $20,000 per year and are the main revenue generator for Bloomberg, slowed for a spell in China, after officials issued orders to some Chinese companies to avoid buying subscriptions. Despite all that, Bloomberg got a license renewal this July from the State Council, China’s cabinet, that allows it to continue providing financial news for two more years.

Other news organizations have come under similar pressure. The websites of The New York Times, including a new Chinese-language edition, were blocked when it published an article in October 2012 on the family wealth of Wen Jiabao, then the prime minister. Like Bloomberg, The Times has also not received residency visas for new journalists.

In recent years, some editors at Bloomberg have encouraged reporters to tackle ambitious investigative reports, in order to broaden the company beyond its foundation as a speed-driven financial news service. At times, that aggressiveness has resulted in ethical breaches, as when Bloomberg was forced to disclose in May that its journalists had gained access to the log-in data of terminal customers to gain an edge in reporting.

But the investigative work has also won top prizes, most notably for the China family wealth series in 2012. Two of the main writers on that series, Michael Forsythe and Shai Oster, were the lead reporters on the recent tycoon story.

Editors at Bloomberg have long been aware of the need to tread carefully in China. A system has been in place that allows editors to add an internal prepublication code to some articles to ensure that they do not appear on terminals in China, two employees said. This has been used regularly with articles on Chinese politics, including the one on Mr. Xi’s family.

The debates within Bloomberg over the two recent China stories have taken place right before scheduled trips to China by two senior Bloomberg figures. Daniel L. Doctoroff, the chief executive of Bloomberg L.P., the parent company, is expected to travel to China in the coming weeks, employees said. The company’s billionaire founder, Michael R. Bloomberg, told Forbes this fall that he plans to go to China soon after stepping down as New York City’s mayor in January to “give some speeches on behalf of the company.”