Not really recent. I read Bloomberg often and don't notice a concerted effort to make China look bad. Negative stories come out regularly and not infrequently but that should be considered normal. There are just as many non negative stories and quite a few positive ones as well. What I will agree with though is that the negative ones have a way of making their way to HN while the positive ones don't. That's really disappointing but that's what HNers up vote so would not blame Bloomberg for this.

Yes, I do agree

Yepp, I said that much some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18174532

Fairly downvoted, as expected.

In my head I see the typical HNer as a scared American, being comforted by the powers that be, that they will be able to retain and improve their quality of living by the imminent collapse of their "predatory enemy".

Relax. It's just another country, with a different system, which is managing to improve the quality of living of millions of people, within and outside China.

A rating agency came out with the report and negative outlook on China's debt. Bloomberg only reported it here.

you are asking why a news org is reporting the bad behavior of a major country? What should they be doing?

I ask the same question. As far as I'm concerned, Bloomberg has lost all credibility due to their horrible covering of the "backdoor" implants. Remember that implant they found about a week after the main Chinese implant story broke? "Chinese Implant Found In US Telecom" Yeah, that was an NSA backdoor (FIREWALK) that was discovered, not Chinese. Good job Bloomberg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog#/media/File:NS...

The article I'm referencing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/new-evide...

Is there an article that explains this? Source on the NSA backdoor being the same one referenced in the bloomberg article?

Pure speculation on my part. I'm just putting the pieces together in a way that makes sense to me, so take it with a grain of salt.

However, my conclusion is based on how the reporting on this is being done, and the fact that we already know that the NSA has backdoored the entire telecom industry, or close to it.

When every statement says "we do not allow governments direct access to servers"...well, what's the logical conclusion? Indirect access, via hardware backdoors, that were leaked and are now widely known to exist. To me, it does feel like there's a wave of 'Blame China' right now, and that maybe Bloomberg is being disingenuous with its reporting on this, if there's even a story to report.

There was an article on HN last week on how Bloomberg pays more to journalists who write stories that "move markets". Seems to be a lot of market moving articles recently. Excuse me while I go back to my corner with my tinfoil hat.