After news assistants arrest, Chinese employees of foreign media on mainland express concerns

Chinese employees of foreign media organisations on the mainland said they were no stranger to pressure and fear imposed by authorities following the arrest of a Chinese woman who was working as a news assistant for a German newspaper and helped report on stories related to Hong Kong’s Occupy movement.

Zhang Miao, 40, was assisting the chief China correspondent for the Hamburg-based weekly Die Zeit, one of the most widely read German newspapers. The publication said last Thursday that Zhang was detained on October 2 by the police on the charge of “inciting public discontent”, Reuters reported.

“I felt a bit panic when I first heard this because anybody like us could be next, but later I realised that I have been living in the shadow since the first day I took the job,” a Chinese news assistant for a foreign media company in the capital, who preferred not to reveal his identity, told the South China Morning Post.

He said the national security officers would “have tea” with the news assistants now and then to “let us know that they are watching”.

“We might have been branded as traitors for the government and some people even though we believe the things we do here are helping to make this country a better place,” he said.

Another Chinese employee in the Beijing office of an overseas media company said she felt troubled by the frequent meetings with the national security authorities, which had influenced her private life.