At least 10 major news organizations have either amended or retracted articles they published about a Chinese man portrayed as a government dissident — but who turned out to be a con man.
The changes were prompted by an investigation by National Public Radio into Wang Jingyu — who amassed a large social media following and has been widely quoted in the news media as a brave critic of the Chinese Communist Party.
NPR found that Wang is a grifter who swindled a Chinese exile out of his $17,000 life savings.
The Associated Press, Al Jazeera, German news outlet Deutsche Welle, US-funded Radio Free Asia and leading newspapers in the Netherlands and Norway have been forced to review their stories as a result of the NPR exposé.
According to NPR, Wang’s intricate plot involved preying on Gao Zhi, 44, who fled to Holland several years ago after being critical of China’s Communist regime and was desperate to be reunited with his wife and two kids.
The media outlet’s months-long investigation found that Wang’s long con included tormenting the family with fake emails from immigration authorities, bogus accusations of bomb threats made by their son and correspondence claiming to be from the Chinese government.
In late 2022, Gao met 22-year-old Wang at a candlelight protest that Wang organized in The Hague after 10 people died in a fire that ripped through an apartment building in northwestern China, the entrances to which were blocked and sealed as a 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, escaped with their children to Thailand and applied for visas to the Netherlands after cops in China raided her home and seized her cellphone.
While living in a Bangkok hotel, Liu received a phone call from someone claiming to be a Chinese diplomat. The person alleged that 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 alleged 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 blitz of missives, 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 that his wife and daughter confessed to making bomb threats against European embassies in Thailand.
“They apologized for this and volunteered to return to China,” according to the email, which Wang handed over to NPR after being reluctant to trust the agency.
In July last year, Wang, who fashioned himself an anti-Communist activist speaking out against the regime in Beijing, encouraged AP and NPR to cover the Gao family’s incarceration, 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 — the family’s entire 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 weeks later, Liu and her daughter called Gao to tell them that they were still in custody in Thailand — contradicting what Wang had said about their release.
Wang then convinced Gao that he wasn’t actually speaking to his wife but an artificial intelligence-generated avatar created by the Chinese Communist Party as a ruse to trick him.
Gao told Liu that he didn’t believe her story — leading her to become so distraught that she contemplated suicide, according to NPR.
A day later, Gao traveled to Germany after the Dutch immigration official emailed him to let him know that his family arrived there.
But Gao ended up being arrested after an associate of Wang who lives in the German city of Essen told police that Gao was part of a Chinese Communist Party cell and that he had threatened the associate’s life.
Police released Gao a few days later.
After his release, Gao sent NPR hundreds of email exchanges with the Dutch immigration official, the Thai Airways official and Thai police — only for the news agency to determine that the accounts were fake.
Gao suspects that Wang orchestrated the entire scheme by impersonating Dutch, Thai and Chinese Communist Party officials in order to scam him out of his life savings.
Wang denied this, telling NPR: “This is ridiculous, and I promise I will sue all of them.”
When asked if he made bomb threats, Wang told NPR: “Never. This is, honestly, ridiculous.”
