During their summit meeting in Beijing, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China made much of their agreement to ease visa restrictions for businessmen, students and tourists.

Yet when Mr. Xi was asked at a news conference if he would do the same for foreign journalists, who have had a hard time obtaining permission to work in China, he displayed little patience with such concerns.

After first appearing to ignore the question from Mark Landler, a reporter from The Times, Mr. Xi circled back to the issue and advised that “when a car breaks down on the road, perhaps we need to step down and see what the problem is.” The metaphor may have been oblique, but the message was clear: He was warning foreign news organizations that their troubles are self-inflicted; they are being penalized for unfavorable or controversial news coverage and could correct the problem by changing that approach.

The Chinese government has regularly declined to process visas for any new resident Times journalist and has sought to block access to the newspaper’s English-language and Chinese-language websites for people inside China over the past two years after news reports were published by The Times on the wealth of China’s political elite.