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[When/how did Bloomburg get a spine re China?

Most US media is very deferential to China since their revenue from advertising is dependent on China manufactured goods.]

That’s not the reason they’re deferential. They kowtow because most news organizations are part of media conglomerates that also have movie and TV production divisions, and China is a fairly big market for their products. The Chinese box office for US films in 2017 was well over $2b https://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/china/yearly/?yr=2017&p=.htm of which the US studios’ share was about 25%. That’s a cool $500m in pure profit for no additional effort. A censored version of Game of Thrones has been licensed for broadcast in China, along with many other American TV productions, so that is probably worth significant amounts as well.

Bloomberg is an exception. It makes no movies or scripted TV shows, and its bread-and-butter is financial terminals providing proprietary data that cost $24,000 each annually. Because they are an indispensable tool of the trade, they are installed in China as well. But at last count, at 5,500 out of 325,000 total installed terminals, the Chinese segment was a blip. And Michael Bloomberg is Bloomberg LP’s 88% controlling shareholder. He is worth $50b and probably doesn’t care about what the Party thinks all that much, except perhaps as it relates to the safety of his reporters and news sources inside China.