At least 10 major news organizations have either changed or retracted stories they published about a Chinese man portrayed as a government dissident – but who turned out to be a fraud.
The changes were prompted by an investigation by National Public Radio into Wang Jingyu — who has amassed a large following on social media and has been widely quoted in the news media as an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party.
NPR found Wang to be a con artist who defrauded a Chinese expat out of his $17,000 life savings.
The Associated Press, Al Jazeera, German newspapers Deutsche Welle, US-funded Radio Free Asia and major newspapers in the Netherlands and Norway have been forced to revise their stories as a result of NPR’s exposure.
According to NPR, Wang’s elaborate plot involved preying on Gao Zhi, 44, who fled to the Netherlands several years ago after being critical of China’s communist regime and desperate to be reunited with his wife and two children. .
The months-long media investigation revealed that Wang’s long scam included torturing the family with fake emails from immigration authorities, false accusations of bomb threats made by their son and correspondence purporting to be from the Chinese government.
In late 2022, Gao met with the 22-year-old Wang at a candlelight vigil that Wang organized in The Hague after 10 people died in a fire that ripped through an apartment building in northwest China, the entrances of which were blocked and sealed off as result of COVID restrictions. .
At the vigil, Wang asked Gao if he and his girlfriend could stay with him at his home in the Dutch countryside. Gao agreed.
Last spring, Gao’s wife, Liu Fengling, fled with their children to Thailand and applied for visas in the Netherlands after police in China raided her home and seized her cellphone.
While living in the hotel in Bangkok, Liu received a call from someone claiming to be a Chinese diplomat. The person claimed her son had threatened to blow up the Chinese embassy in Bangkok.
Liu also received an email from someone claiming to be a Dutch immigration officer who claimed that she and her son had sent bomb threats to European airports and that as a result they would not be allowed to travel to the continent.
During this attack, Liu and her 17-year-old daughter overstayed their tourist visas and were sent to immigration detention for two months.
The same Dutch immigration official then sent Gao an email saying his wife and daughter admitted to making bomb threats against European embassies in Thailand.
“They apologized for it and volunteered to return to China,” according to the email, which Wang turned over to NPR after he was reluctant to trust the agency.
In July of last year, Wang, who made himself an anti-communist activist by speaking out against the regime in Beijing, encouraged the AP and NPR to cover the imprisonment of the Gao family, bolstering Wang’s image as a brave dissident.
The following month, an email from the Dutch immigration officer to Gao falsely stated that Liu and their daughter were released from Thai detention.
Gao then received an email from a Thai Airways official asking for credit cards to facilitate flights from Thailand to Europe.
According to Gao, the credit cards were charged $17,000 — all of the family’s life savings.
Around that time, Wang and his girlfriend left Gao’s house. Gao told NPR that Wang said he was going to Switzerland to meet Liu and their daughter.
But a few weeks later, Liu and her daughter called Gao to say they were still in detention in Thailand – contradicting what Wang had said about their release.
Wang then convinced Gao that he was not actually talking to his wife, but an AI-generated avatar created by the Chinese Communist Party as a ruse to deceive him.
Gao told Liu he didn’t believe her story — causing her to worry so much that she considered suicide, according to NPR.
A day later, Gao traveled to Germany after the Dutch immigration official emailed him to let him know his family had arrived there.
But Gao ended up being arrested after an associate of Wang’s who lives in the German city of Essen told police that Gao is part of a Chinese Communist Party cell and that he had threatened the associate’s life.
The police released Gao a few days later.
After his release, Gao sent NPR hundreds of email exchanges with Dutch immigration officials, Thai Airways officials and Thai police — only for the news agency to determine the accounts were fake.
Gao suspects that Wang orchestrated the entire scheme by impersonating Dutch, Thai and Chinese Communist Party officials to cheat him out of his life savings.
Wang denied this, telling NPR: “This is ridiculous, and I promise to sue everyone.”
When asked if he made bomb threats, Wang told NPR: “Never. This is, frankly, ridiculous.”
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