For Singapore-based Wall Street Journal technology reporter Liza Lin, journalism is more than just storytelling. It is an act of persistence, perseverance, and truth-telling. After nearly two decades covering China’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, Lin has learned that writing about authoritarian regimes involves as much courage and tenacity as it does writing skill and talent. She has mastered the arts of reading documents between the lines, analyzing government data, and verifying anonymous information from sources.
Now at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow, Lin is reflecting on what it means to report about countries where information is often hidden and controlled by the government. She is also learning more about China’s technological development, exploring topics such as biotechnology and generative artificial intelligence.
I sat down with Lin last fall to discuss the lessons she has learned. She spoke to me about digital surveillance, anonymous sourcing, and the challenges of doing investigative reporting under difficult political constraints. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Zoe Beketova: What made you choose a career in journalism?
Liza Lin: Most people don’t go into journalism for the money, and they definitely don’t stay in journalism for the money. The thing that drew me to the profession is that there’s a lot about society that policymakers don’t see, either because they’re too detached from the ground or because there are vested interests surrounding them.
ZB: What differences do you see between doing investigative journalism in China and in the U.S.?
LL: The biggest difference is access to data and sources. In a democracy like the U.S., press freedom is valued and guaranteed. If you need government data, you can file a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] or there are public databases that you can tap into. In a place like China, certain data that would have been public in any other country is hidden under the guise of national security. Government contracts which were freely available in China about a decade ago, and are openly available in most other countries, have been pulled because the Chinese government does not want you to know what sort of software they’re buying, or how many surveillance cameras they’re buying.
Another big difference is the repercussions. In the U.S., a lot of people freely speak to journalists. In China, speaking to a journalist could land [a person] in a detention cell. The Chinese government is proactive in trying to figure out who’s been talking to journalists. A lot of messaging software is heavily monitored to make sure that you’re not talking about certain areas that the government considers a national secret. The line as to what the Chinese government considers a national secret is also often very gray. In times of economic downturn, certain economic data could come under the umbrella of a national secret, and you can’t freely talk about such topics. The line is gray and shifting all the time. That makes it really difficult to understand how to protect your sources and make sure they’re safe.
A lot of credit needs to go to reporters in autocracies who are actually nationals of that country because they run a much bigger risk of state harassment…
ZB: So, to prevent putting sources in danger, do you tend to rely more on data and documents in your reporting?
LL: I think the best practice is always to use data to try and verify what a source is saying. That’s played out in a lot of my reporting, because over the past six years I’ve been trying to report about China from outside of China. China is increasingly becoming a black box.
An interesting example is when I was looking into China’s digital surveillance state about eight years ago. China was trying to pioneer AI to use facial recognition to find people of interest. We had just reported about the buildup of the Chinese surveillance state, and I spoke to some researchers in the field and realized that a lot of China’s surveillance equipment came not just from the West, but from one particular spot: Silicon Valley. This information was just from someone telling me this. To prove it, I went through hundreds of government contracts which would break down the specific brands and the specifications of the equipment they needed. So I figured out what they were buying, and which brands they were using.
ZB: I assume this source wished to stay anonymous. How do you handle any danger toward your sources, or even yourself as a reporter, when covering sensitive topics?
LL: A lot of credit needs to go to reporters in autocracies who are actually nationals of that country because they run a much bigger risk of state harassment than a foreign correspondent like myself. One of the things that journalists in Western democracies don’t think about is the repercussions to writing a good story in autocracies. Governments often go after journalists, and not just the journalists but their families, to make sure that the journalist is shaken up and doesn’t write about the topic again. As a foreign correspondent, it’s easy to talk about what I do in China, because, I mean, the biggest repercussion would be that I would be barred entry to the country. But for the mainland Chinese who are trying to do hard-hitting journalism, they have a lot at stake. They are often called in for “tea chats” with public security officials in China. Public security officials are just state police. Just as a reminder that, you know, we’re there, and we’re watching what you’re doing.
Foreign correspondents’ movements are also tracked by public security officials. When you buy a plane ticket or check into a hotel, they often send minders to turn up and see what you’re doing. On the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, China is ranked consistently among the lowest, and that really plays out in regular reporting. So I think the onus is on the reporter to, if you’re citing an unnamed source, make sure whatever that source is saying is validated, either directly by data or indirectly by other sources.
I think it’s about constantly making new sources, meeting people, catching up. Shoe leather journalism. I don’t know a better way of saying it.
ZB: Do you ever have to deal with any unconventional sourcing?
LL: It’s important to think outside the box when sourcing. Many years ago, I was in Sichuan, where a colleague and I were trying to verify that kids in a school had had their DNA collected by the Chinese police. It was very difficult to speak to the kids as they were coming out of school because they are minors. Instead, we tried to do our reporting at a noodle stand or a convenience store just outside the school where the kids would stop by with their parents, so it wouldn’t cross the line by trying to speak to minors who are too young and might give you the wrong information. It was good to speak to their parents instead to verify certain information.
ZB: What’s been your main takeaway in reporting in difficult press landscapes, then? What’s helped you the most with navigating reporting in and about China?
LL: You know, when I was a young rookie reporter, I was wondering how these journalists broke so many stories. Now I know, but it took me several years. It’s about sticking to a beat for a long time, developing expertise, making sure people trust you. People trust you when you’re a responsible reporter and you do good work. If you can stick it out in a beat for years, the person that you met eight years ago, who was just a manager of a certain division, might have risen the ranks to a much more senior person with access to more information.
I think it’s about constantly making new sources, meeting people, catching up. Shoe leather journalism. I don’t know a better way of saying it. In the end, we’re reporters, not data scientists, not researchers or analysts, so we should use that to our advantage. We speak to people, and then we mine the data.
Zoe Beketova is a master’s student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing. Outside of MIT, she reports on mental and public health systems.
