{"id":7558,"date":"2019-08-23T00:27:21","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T15:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/aug\/22\/british-consulate-china-media-claims-prostitutes"},"modified":"2019-08-23T00:27:21","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T15:27:21","slug":"chinas-state-media-accuses-worker-at-uk-consulate-of-visiting-prostitutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=7558","title":{"rendered":"China&#8217;s state media accuses worker at UK consulate &#8216;of visiting prostitutes&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Allegation directed at employee of consulate in Hong Kong is often used by Bejing authorities to smear critics<\/p>\n<p>Chinese state media has accused a worker at the British consulate in Hong Kong who is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/aug\/20\/employee-at-uk-consulate-in-hong-kong-detained-in-china\">detained in mainland China<\/a> of visiting prostitutes \u2013 an accusation often used by the authorities to smear the reputation of government critics.<\/p>\n<p>Simon Cheng, 28, a trade and investment officer for Scottish Development International, travelled to Shenzhen, a city that borders Hong Kong, on 8 August. He sent messages to his girlfriend as he was about to cross back over the border at about 10pm and has not been heard from since.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/aug\/22\/british-consulate-china-media-claims-prostitutes\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Allegation directed at employee of consulate in Hong Kong is often used by Bejing authorities to smear criticsChinese state media has accused a worker at the British consulate in Hong Kong who is detained in mainland China of visiting prostitutes \u2013 an &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[559,41,50,319,48,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-foreign-policy","category-hong-kong","category-uk-news","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7559,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7558\/revisions\/7559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}