AMSTERDAM – Reporting on Wang Jingyu, a Chinese celebrity dissident, can be perplexing, stressful and scary. Ask Marije Vlaskamp, a correspondent with de Volkskrant, a leading Dutch daily newspaper.
In the fall of 2022, Vlaskamp said Wang told her that people he thought were working for the Chinese government were harassing and threatening him. Wang asked if she would publish a story, but Vlaskamp declined.
"He was giving me lots and lots of information in a really chaotic way," Vlaskamp told NPR in an interview last month. "It was so difficult to check everything he was saying and so time consuming, also a lot of . . . information he (gave) me was really not a news story."
Then something happened that was news.
The Chinese embassy in the Hague told Dutch police they had received a bomb threat in Wang and Vlaskamp's names. Police cordoned off the area. Vlaskamp and Wang denied any involvement. Another bomb threat in their names followed at the Chinese embassy in Norway.
Vlaskamp became frightened.
"Can I still travel abroad or will my name end up on international wanted lists as a terrorism suspect?" she wrote in a 6,300-word article about the bomb threats and Wang, which made a splash in the Netherlands.
"I am aware that my story may initially sound . . . like the script of an implausible spy movie," Vlaskamp wrote. But, she added, "During the almost quarter century that I've been working as a China correspondent, I've learned enough to know how the Chinese operate if they want someone to shut up."
Police investigated the bomb threats but found no "concrete indications" that a state actor was involved. In her recent interview with NPR, Vlaskamp also said the idea that the Chinese government would target her in this way didn't make much sense at the time.
"It felt utterly weird," she said. "I always had quite good professional relations with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the government and suddenly I was in this position that I was framed as a terrorist who would bomb a Chinese embassy!"
Vlaskamp says at the time police and her editors asked if she thought Wang might have sent the bomb threats himself. Vlaskamp told them she wasn't sure and that anyone could have been responsible.
Wang, now 23, vehemently denies he had anything to do with the bomb threats.
"It's not worth wasting even a second of my time responding to this silly slander," he said in an interview with NPR last month.
Human rights groups say the Chinese government routinely targets its critics overseas, even if officials in Beijing deny it. Over the last several years, Wang made a name for himself claiming that he faced constant threats from the Communist Party. Dozens of news organizations either featured or referenced Wang as a victim of what's called transnational repression.
In 2023, NPR reached out to Wang and he offered a tip on what he claimed was another bomb threat story. He said the family of a friend and fellow dissident – a man named Gao Zhi – had been traveling in Thailand when someone using the family members' names made bomb threats to the Chinese embassy there. Amid the confusion, two of the family members landed in immigration detention in Bangkok.
But when NPR investigated, it found a very different story. Wang's account of the alleged bomb threats was largely based on forged government documents – documents that Wang had assured NPR were authentic.
As the story unraveled, Wang's friend, Gao, and his family told NPR that the bomb threat accusations against them were allegedly part of an elaborate con in which Wang had wiped out their life savings.
Wang says he never took any money from the family and that their claims are absurd.
"This is ridiculous and I promise I will sue all of them," Wang told NPR.
After NPR published an expose on Wang last year, Vlaskamp reached out. She said she welcomed the revelations about Wang because they provided the possibility that someone other than the Chinese government might have targeted her.
Vlaskamp has since reviewed her reporting on Wang, but says that – more than two years on – she still isn't certain who made the bomb threats.
"It's really tempting to speculate about Wang, but I'm not going to do that," she said. "The last time I was investigating what Wang was alleging I got bomb threats in my own name."
Last month, de Volkskrant amended two stories Vlaskamp wrote about Wang and linked to NPR's investigation. The newspaper said NPR's reporting cast Wang "in a different light."
De Volksrant still stands by its reporting about the bomb threats, but no longer considers Wang a reliable source on the topic of China's targeting of critics overseas.
Vlaskamp was not the only person who wrote about Wang Jingyu and also found themself named in bomb threats. Another was Su Yutong, a self-described activist who also works as a freelance reporter with Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news service funded by the U.S. government. In Congressional testimony last year, Su said the Chinese government has harassed her for more than a decade. She said she's been targeted with everything from fake sex ads – which drew men to her door – to death and rape threats.
At RFA, Su wrote 19 stories featuring or referencing Wang, according to a review by NPR.
Like Vlaskamp, Su says she also initially suspected the Chinese government was behind the bomb threats that targeted her. But after reading NPR's expose, she has doubts.
Looking back, Su also says Wang tricked her. For instance, she says Wang sent her screenshots in 2023 indicating that Gao was heading to Germany to kill a fellow dissident.
Su, who lives in Berlin, says she notified German police out of concern. Police arrested Gao at a train station in the German city of Essen and – soon afterward – released him. Su says she now thinks Wang used her to get police to arrest his accuser.
"This is not true," responded Wang, who has said he believes Gao was conned, but insists he had nothing to do with it. "I didn't tell her or ask her to call the police."
Su says Wang also told her his accuser had handed over his family to the Communist Party. This was another astonishing claim that NPR investigated and debunked.
But Su – who had her own personal dispute with Gao – says she believed it. In fact, she joined Wang in an X Spaces conversation and repeated some of his false claims about Gao.
Soon after NPR's investigation aired, Su turned on her long-time source.
"Now, I know Wang is a liar," Su told NPR.
Su has apologized to Wang's accuser, and to NPR for declining to answer questions about Wang earlier. At the time, Su said she would only meet with NPR in Berlin if a German police officer were present.
"I would like to say sorry to you," Su told NPR last year, "because, I didn't trust you before (your) report was published."
Su says she didn't trust NPR because Wang suggested she shouldn't. She says she now thinks Wang was trying to keep her and NPR from sharing information.
"He deceived me," she said. "I'm very angry."
Su says that after she was named in bomb threats, she felt sympathy for Wang. She says she should've been more skeptical.
"Now, I think I was foolish, I really was foolish," she told a Chinese YouTuber, who did a four-part series on NPR's report.
Wang says Su's various claims are false. For instance, he says he never told Su that his accuser had handed his family over to the Communist Party, but he did tell NPR this.
"Su Yutong is a real liar. She lied about many things," Wang told NPR. "She is a terrible reporter."
Radio Free Asia retracted two of Su's stories on Wang and removed his comments from eight others.
Volkskrant and Radio Free Asia are among at least 10 news organizations that have retracted or amended stories on Wang following NPR's investigation.
"He deceived all the reporters, I think," Su now says. "This incident is a particularly bad thing for everyone's credibility."
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