Detained Bloomberg employee and Australian official media anchor were close friends, suspected that the two cases are related

Fan Ruoyi, a Chinese employee of Bloomberg in Beijing, was recently detained by authorities on suspicion of endangering national security. The two of them had collected supplies for the frontline medical workers in Wuhan in February.

Fan Ruoyi, a Chinese employee of Bloomberg in Beijing, was recently detained by authorities on suspicion of endangering national security.

The government’s official media, China Global Television Network (CGTN), has not released Cheng Lei, who was detained in Beijing in August on suspicion of “criminal activities against China’s national security.

Cheng Lei’s Facebook page shows that she is close friends with Haze Fan, a Bloomberg News employee who was taken away by Beijing’s state security authorities on Dec. 7 on the same grounds.

In a February post, Cheng Lei said she and Fan had each sought permission to travel to Wuhan to cover the 2019 coronavirus outbreak, but were not allowed to do so, so they each raised money and supplies for frontline medical staff in Wuhan, and within hours had collected more than 100,000 yuan and other supplies to give to doctors at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Wuhan.

Cheng Lei’s arrest follows the arrest of Australian-Chinese writer Yang Hengjun in January 2019 on suspicion of espionage.

After Cheng Lei’s arrest, ABC reporter Bill Birtles and Australian Financial Review reporter Michael Smith were also approached by state security personnel for questioning, and were eventually evacuated from China in early September with the assistance of a foreign embassy.

In an interview with the ABC after his release, Bertel revealed that Chinese security officials did not question him about his interviews or behavior in China, but instead asked about Cheng Lei. He said that although he knew Cheng Lei, he did not know her well, and that Smith, who was stationed in Shanghai, had only met her once.

So far, authorities have not announced specific charges against Cheng Lei or Fan Ruo Yi, or whether they are involved in the same case.

Hong Kong online media “News” reported that Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait and other senior executives said in a conference call with the Hong Kong and China news departments on the 11th that Fan Ruo Yi’s detention should have nothing to do with her reporting content.