Journalists covered dissidents in China. Bomb threats continue: NPR

AMSTERDAM – Coverage of China’s celebrity dissident Wang Jingyu can be embarrassing, stressful and frightening. Just ask Marije Vlaskamp, ​​a correspondent for the leading Dutch daily newspaper De Volksland.

Vlaskamp said that in the fall of 2022, Wang told her he was being harassed and threatened by people he believed were working for the Chinese government. Mr. Wang asked if he would like to publish the article, but Mr. Vlaskamp declined.

“He gave me so much information in a really chaotic way,” Vlaskamp said in an interview with NPR last month. “It was very difficult and very time-consuming to check everything he said. Also, a lot of the information he gave me wasn’t actually news articles.”

Then something happened that made the news.

The Chinese embassy in The Hague told Dutch police that it had received bomb threats in the names of Mr. Wang and Mr. Vlaskamp. Police cordoned off the area. Vlaskamp and Wang denied any involvement. Another bomb threat in their name followed at the Chinese embassy in Norway.

Vlaskamp was scared.

“Will I still be able to travel abroad? Or will I be internationally wanted as a terrorist suspect?” She wrote a 6,300-word article about the bomb threat and the king that went viral in the Netherlands.

“I realize that my story may sound at first like an incredible spy movie script,” Vlaskamp wrote. But she added, “In the nearly quarter century that I have worked as a China correspondent, I have learned enough to know how the Chinese act when they want to silence someone.”

Police investigated the bomb threat but found no “concrete indications” that state agents were involved. In a recent interview with NPR, Vlaskamp also said that the idea that the Chinese government would target her in this way didn’t make much sense at the time.

“It felt completely weird,” she said. “I had always had a very good professional relationship with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese government, and suddenly I found myself in the position of being framed as a terrorist to blow up the Chinese embassy!”

Ms. Vlaskamp said she was asked by police and her editor at the time if she thought Mr. Wang might have sent the bomb threat himself. Vlaskamp said he wasn’t sure and that anyone could be responsible.

Wang, now 23, has vehemently denied having anything to do with the bomb threat.

“It’s not worth a second to waste responding to this stupid slander,” he said in an interview with NPR last month.

Human rights groups say the Chinese government routinely targets its critics abroad, even if Chinese officials deny it. In recent years, Mr. Wang has made a name for himself by claiming he is under constant threat from the Communist Party. Dozens of news outlets featured or referred to Mr. Wang as a victim of so-called transnational repression.

In 2023, NPR contacted Wang and he provided a tip about what he claimed was another bomb threat story. He said that while the family of a friend and fellow dissident named Gao Ji was traveling in Thailand, someone using the family’s name made a bomb threat to the Chinese embassy in Thailand. Amidst the chaos, two family members arrived at the Bangkok immigration office.

But an investigation by NPR revealed a very different story. Mr. Wang’s account of the alleged bomb threat was based primarily on forged government documents, documents that Mr. Wang assured NPR were genuine.

As the story unravels, Wang’s friend Gao and his family told NPR that the bomb threat accusations against them were part of an elaborate scam in which Wang depleted their life savings. He said he is doing so.

Wang has never received any money from the family and says their claims are ridiculous.

“This is ridiculous. I promise to sue them all,” Wang told NPR.

Vlaskamp reached out after NPR published an exposé about Wang last year. She said she welcomed the revelations about Wang because they suggested someone other than the Chinese government might have targeted her.

Vlaskamp has since reviewed her reporting on Wang, but more than two years later, she said she is still not sure who made the bomb threat.

“It’s tempting to speculate about Mr. Wang, but that’s not my intention,” she said. “Last time, when I was investigating Mr. Wang’s claims, I received a bomb threat in my name.”

Last month, De Volksland revised two articles Vlaskamp wrote about Wang related to the NPR investigation. The paper said NPR’s reporting “gives a different perspective” to Wang.

Although De Volksland still stands behind its reporting on the bomb threat, it no longer considers Wang a reliable source on the subject of China targeting its critics abroad.

Mr. Vlaskamp was not the only person to write about Wang Jingyu, but he also found himself named in the bomb threat. Another is Su Yutong, a self-described activist who also works as a freelance reporter for Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news service funded by the US government. In Congressional testimony last year, Su said he had been harassed by the Chinese government for more than a decade. She said she has been targeted with everything from fake sex ads to lure men to her home to death and rape threats.

According to an NPR review, Mr. Hsu wrote 19 articles on RFA that featured or mentioned Mr. Wang.

Like Vlaskamp, ​​Su said she initially suspected the Chinese government was behind the bomb threat aimed at her. But after reading NPR’s exposé, she had doubts.

Looking back, Su also said that Wang deceived her. For example, she said Mr. Wang sent screenshots showing that Mr. Gao was headed to Germany in 2023 to kill fellow dissidents.

Sue, who lives in Berlin, said she was worried and called German police. Police arrested Gao at a train station in the German city of Essen and released him shortly thereafter. Ms Hsu said she now believes Mr Wang may have used her to get his accuser arrested by police.

“This is not true,” Mr. Wang replied, saying he believed Mr. Gao had been deceived but insisted he had nothing to do with it. “I didn’t tell her to call the police, nor did I ask her to.”

Su said Wang also told her that the accuser handed over his family to the Communist Party. This was another surprising claim that NPR investigated and debunked.

But Su, who had a personal dispute with Gao, said she believed it. In fact, she took part in a conversation with Mr. Wang at X Spaces, repeating some of his false claims about Mr. Gao.

Shortly after the NPR investigation aired, Sue turned to a longtime source.

“Now I know Wang is a liar,” Hsu told NPR.

Mr. Hsu apologized to Mr. Wang’s accusers and to NPR for his earlier refusal to answer questions about Mr. Wang. At the time, Hsu said she would only meet with NPR in Berlin if a German police officer was present.

“I want to say I’m sorry to you,” Sue told NPR last year. “Because I didn’t trust you until (your) report was published.”

Ms. Hsu said she did not trust NPR because Mr. Wang suggested she should not trust NPR. She said she now believes Mr. Wang was trying to prevent her from sharing information with NPR.

“He deceived me,” she said. “I’m very angry.”

Su said she felt sorry for Wang after he was named in the bomb threat. She says she should have been more suspicious.

“Looking back, I think I was stupid. I was really stupid,” she told the Chinese YouTuber who did a four-part series about NPR’s reporting.

Mr. Wang maintains that Mr. Su’s various claims are false. For example, he never told Hsu that his accuser handed his family over to the Communist Party, but he did tell NPR.

“Su Yutong is a real liar. She lied about a lot of things,” Wang told NPR. “She’s a terrible reporter.”

Radio Free Asia retracted two of Su’s articles about Wang and deleted eight other comments.

Volkskrant and Radio Free Asia are among at least 10 news organizations that have retracted or revised articles about Wang following NPR’s investigation.

“I think he fooled all the reporters,” Sue says now. “This incident is particularly bad for everyone’s trust.”