Journalist missing three years ago will be detained in China

In a statement released on Tuesday, the media freedom organization recalled that Minnie Chan disappeared while covering the Xiangshan Forum, China's main annual military diplomacy conference.

This year's Xiangshan Forum on Defense and Security began on Tuesday and takes place for three days in the Chinese capital.

The RSF said that according to “several unidentified sources”, Minnie Chan will be “held in custody by the Chinese regime.”.

The organization said that the charges “have not been made public”, but “they appear to be related to China’s national security,” so the journalist could face a sentence of at least 10 years in prison.

“ We remain deeply concerned about Minnie Chan’s situation,” said RSF’s advocacy manager for Asia Pacific, Aleksandra Bielakowska, quoted in the statement.

“We cannot allow the world to forget Minnie Chan. We need to support the reporter, her family and her friends while the Chinese Government tries to erase any information about her from public knowledge,” she added.

“ Its whereabouts must be revealed, and the international community must do everything possible to ensure the release of this journalist (...), who should not be in a Chinese prison”, said Bielakowska.

At the end of January, Drew Thompson, former Pentagon manager for relations with China, said that at the time he disappeared, Minnie Chan was investigating rumors about a possible investigation into Zhang Youxia, former number two of the Chinese Army.

Days before these statements, China announced the opening of a 75-year-old investigation into Zhang, one of the vice presidents of the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), for “serious violations of discipline,” a euphemism commonly used to designate acts of corruption.

Minnie Chan will have texted Drew Thompson weeks before she disappeared.

“She was a friend. He knew everything about the People's Liberation Army and helped us understand China better. I hope that now, with the investigation made public, it can be released,” Thompson said in January.

On August 28, the Chinese authorities announced the formal dismissal of Zhang Youxia as vice president of the CMC, the maximum command body of the Chinese Armed Forces, chaired by Xi Jinping.

Questioned about Minnie Chan at the end of 2023, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said: “I am not aware of this [situation]”.

China is “the country that most journalists arrest in the world,” with 119 currently detained, the RSF said.

“ In recent years, several journalists have been kidnapped or secretly arrested and kept incommunicado, often in a secret detention system known as residential surveillance at a designated location,” the organization said.

The RSF gives as an example the Chinese journalist of Bloomberg Haze Fan, who disappeared in 2020 and was released on bail in 2022, and Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist arrested in 2020 and released in 2023.

According to the RSF World Press Freedom Index for 2026, China ranks 178th among 180 countries and territories. Hong Kong was in position 140, a fall from the 18th position recorded in 2002.