In a Jan. 25 article on blackmail by Chinese journalists, Hua Kejian, Liang Yongjian and Song Yi were named by several knowledgeable sources as participants in a blackmail scheme. Hua, Liang and Song deny they were part of the scheme or knew about it. They say that, however those involved in the scheme portrayed it, they never had any intention of accepting money in return for withholding news.
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Blackmailing By Journalists In China Seen As 'Frequent'
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More recently, some blackmail targets have started striking back. More than 40 people were arrested last month in Shanxi province on charges of impersonating reporters and trying to extort money from local officials and business owners, according to the official New China News Agency.
"People can't help but ask, 'Why are these fake reporters so savage?' " the news agency said in a Dec. 12 editorial.
Zhou Yu, a slight man with sharp gestures and a ring in his left earlobe, said the lure of money was not what motivated him to take Bai's payoff envelope that evening in Shenzhen. "I was trying to help," he said in an interview. "It was out of friendship."
Zhou said Bai, a physician, had telephoned him earlier in the day asking for advice because, she said, two reporters had warned her they were about to write a story accusing her Jianmin Clinic of providing services it was not certified to perform, including abortions. Bai turned to him, Zhou explained, because a year earlier he had written what he described as a critical but objective story about her clinic.
"If I can help a friend, I think I should help," he said.
The two reporters who went to Bai's office were Hua Kejian of the Nanfang Daily and Liang Yongjian of Zhou's own Southern Metropolitan Daily, both owned by the prestigious Nanfang publishing house based in nearby Guangzhou, according to Zhou and others involved. A third reporter, Song Yi of the Yangcheng Evening News, joined the pair later in the day, they said.
"Their motive was very apparent," Zhou said.
After contacting the reporters, Zhou told Bai she would have to come up with 15,000 yuan to buy silence for her clinic, according to Zhou and the other sources. Zhou said he did not plan to pocket any of the money himself, only to pass it along to the other reporters.
"I thought this would be okay with my newspaper," he added, "because I was just a go-between."
The sum demanded was high, even for a boomtown such as Shenzhen. Most blackmail payouts to reporters are counted in the hundreds of yuan, according to Chinese reporters and editors. Acting on the advice of another acquaintance, therefore, Bai sent a cellphone message to Zhou complaining that the price was unreasonable. But Zhou responded that there was no way to reduce it, Bai's acquaintance said in an interview.
Zhou told Bai the cash should be divided into three packets of 5,000 yuan each and arranged for the handover to take place in the parking lot near his bureau on a leafy boulevard in central Shenzhen, according to several people involved.
At that point, Gou, the bureau chief, received a troubling telephone call. The acquaintance of Bai's, outraged at the amount demanded by Zhou, called to say Gou's reporters were involved in a blackmail scheme and that, as bureau chief, he should do something about it, according to Gou and the acquaintance, who described his role on condition of anonymity.
