In one of its closing acts of 2020, a year of unprecedented restrictions on free speech and the foreign media, China detained a local staff member working in the Beijing newsroom for international media company Bloomberg.

News that the Chinese citizen, Haze Fan, had been escorted from her home by plain-clothes security officials and was being held on suspicion of “endangering national security” shocked the hundreds of foreign journalists still working in China. It followed the detention of Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who worked for state media, on similar grounds in August.