RSF and Safeguard Defenders received confirmation from local sources that Chinese journalist Bai Zhaodong, detained at the Suan Phlu Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok, faces the risk of deportation to China following pressure from the People's Republic of China.  

The news comes just ahead of Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s scheduled visit to China from July 16 to 20, 2026.  Bai managed to flee China on 29 November  2023. In September 2024, he was subjected to an arrest warrant issued by the Public Security Bureau of Yulin City on trumped up allegations of “extortion”. Thai authorities have since prevented Bai’s relocation to a safe third country and prohibited him from leaving the country. He has been held in Thai detention since January 2026. If deported, the journalist is at grave foreseeable, present, personal and real risk of political persecution, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture and other serious human rights violations. 

Bai Zhaodong has worked as an investigative journalist in China for over 25 years, most recently with the renowned Beijing Caijing Magazine.  His work exposed a large-scale corruption and financial fraud network involving money laundering and other illicit financial activities. The investigation implicated both local government officials and higher-ranking officials within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“We call on the Thai authorities to permit the journalist Bai Zhaodong to relocate to a country of his choosing and to refrain from complying with any requests from the Chinese government. Thai government must uphold its obligations under international law and demonstrate its clear commitment to established human rights standards, or risk serious damage to its global reputation. In recent years, the Chinese regime have gained notoriety for the systematic persecution of journalists and remain the world’s leading jailer of reporters, with 120 individuals currently detained. Should Bai be forcibly returned to China, he would face not only persecution but also grave risks to his personal safety," said Aleksandra Bielakowska, RSF Asia-Pacific Advocacy Manager.

Due to the nature of its findings and the senior individuals implicated, his work was regarded by the authorities as highly sensitive. Following its publication, Bai was subjected to intensified surveillance, intimidation, and sustained pressure from both regional and central government authorities, as RSF information. Throughout his career, Bai Zhaodong has been subjected to retaliatory persecution by Chinese authorities for his investigative reporting on corruption and financial fraud in Shaanxi Province, including six instances of criminal charges, interrogations and detentions. 

As RSF’s latest report on the use of national security laws against journalists shows, the Chinese government often uses vague charges such as “espionage,” “subversion,” or “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”to charge journalists. 120 journalists are currently imprisoned in China - the biggest prison for journalists in the world as RSF data shows.

They are routinely placed in Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL) - a pre-judicial system of solitary confinement for up to six months in secret detention centres that has repeatedly been defined as a system of enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and torture in and of itself by UN Human Rights Procedures.

“Thai authorities must withstand the growing pressure from the PRC to forcibly detain and return individuals sought for clear political persecution by the Chinese Communist Party and uphold its commitments under international and domestic torture prohibitions. Multiple independent international human rights assessments and courts in democratic nations have consistently reported the “general situation of violence” in China’s judicial and detention system, as well as its incessant use of enforced disappearances, torture and forced confessions to maintain its condemnation rate of 99.9%. Following the forceful return of 40 Uyghurs to China last year, the international community must be clear that at stake is not only Bai and others’ wellbeing, but Thailand’s international image itself," said Laura Harth, Safeguard Defenders' China in the World Director.