From the Daily Mail article:

"But when they landed in Beijing on October 3 after two back-to-back flights, they claim they were refused entry by border officials."

If, per chance, one of those flights was Japan--China, it would explain the rejection. I will keep digging. We managed to figure out the previous cruise related mystery, so I give us good odds in this case. It will be worth the effort because if we determine that China is now arbitrarily enforcing these policies (setting the Turkey thing aside), we should think about revising the wiki.