HONG KONG — A French journalist says she is facing expulsion from China after she wrote an article critical of the country’s treatment of its Uighur minority, which set off stinging criticism in the state-controlled press, a public rebuke from a government spokeswoman and a torrent of online invective.

The journalist, Ursula Gauthier, a Beijing-based reporter for the newsmagazine L’Obs, must leave China before Jan. 1 unless her press credentials are renewed, usually a routine process taking place in November and early December for the hundreds of foreign correspondents based in China. As of Tuesday, Ms. Gauthier said in an interview, she had received no notice from the Foreign Ministry that she would be allowed to stay, nor any similar indication from French diplomats, who have raised her case with Chinese officials.

Should Ms. Gauthier be forced to leave, she would be the first foreign correspondent expelled from China since Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera’s English-language service left in 2012 after reporting on issues such as forced land seizures and illegal detention centers, also known as “black jails.”

The government has also punished news organizations that report on the wealth accumulated by the families of Chinese leaders by withholding credentials from new journalists they assign to China. New reporters hired by The New York Times were forced to leave Beijing in 2012 and 2014 after the government declined to grant them visas.