Photo: VCG

A recent CNN report titled "Westerners are increasingly scared of traveling to China as threat of detention rises" once again exaggerates the horror of "Red China" by portraying a picture of the Chinese government's "arbitrary detention".

However, the Global Times found out that all scholars, NGO workers and journalists who were allegedly persecuted by China, as reported by CNN, were in fact activists of anti-China overseas forces or individuals charged under Chinese law. 

The US professor Jeff Wasserstrom, self-proclaimed China specialist featured in CNN 's story, once expressed on social media his support to Hong Kong's separatists and street riots. He has repeatedly attacked China's political system and its governance of Hong Kong in his publications and retweeted various fabricated articles accusing China of committing genocide in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. But none of those facts were mentioned in the CNN report.

Another American mentioned in the report, William Nee, is an employee of NGO China Human Rights Defenders, an organization that is funded by the US government to fabricate baseless rumors about Xinjiang- with an obvious intention to subvert the Chinese government, many observers pointed out. 

Bill Birtles and Mike Smith, two Australian journalists working in China, fled to their country last September after learning that they were "persons of interest in an investigation" on the case of Cheng Lei, a Chinese-Australian anchor for state broadcaster CGTN detained earlier last year, CNN reported. Cheng was then confirmed to be arrested in February on suspicion of illegally supplying Chinese state secrets overseas.

And CNN did not tell the other side of the story. In the past few years, Australian media has been cooperating with the Australian government to stigmatize Chinese people in Australia, including Chinese students and scholars, and even harassed Chinese journalists in Australia with the excuse of tracking Chinese spies.

According to the CNN report, Richard O'Halloran was the first Irish citizen to be the subject of a Chinese exit ban in February 2019, and was investigated for a business dispute involving fraud allegations against a shareholder in the firm he worked for.

The Global Times found out that O'Halloran was indeed the main overseas manager of the project promoted by the company, which was investigated by Shanghai police in 2018 for allegedly illegally taking public funds. The investors, who lost a large amount of money with the scam, relied on Chinese legal channels to restrict his exit.

CNN's report relies on bias to mislead the public. It depicted those with ulterior motives, who are fundamentally challenging China's sovereignty, endangering China's national security and defaming China's image, as "innocent" foreigners who were persecuted and investigated by the Chinese government.

Analysts say CNN has been an American pawn in recent years to play up with the political intentions of the US and Western powers to demonize China. The recent report is the latest evidence that shows how CNN works with Western political forces to play their political game.