Bret Baier’s Fox News crew was busted by Beijing’s cameras for illegal parking during Donald Trump’s state visit—and locals filmed the team blocking traffic too.
Baier anchored Special Report from the Chinese capital on Wednesday at the start of a three-day trip by Trump for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, 72—the first visit by a U.S. president to China since Trump himself visited in 2017.
The Fox host used the broadcast to focus on the country’s sprawling network of surveillance cameras, before revealing that his own driver had been zapped by a surveillance camera moments after a brief illegal stop.
“In fact, our driver parked illegally for two minutes, and he got a message on his phone that he got a ticket for about 40 bucks U.S because they saw it on the camera,” Baier said.
He opened the segment by warning viewers about the all-seeing surveillance net, claiming he could count at least 20 cameras on a single corner outside Beijing’s Haidian Station.
“Big Brother is watching. There are literally cameras everywhere in Beijing,” he said. “In fact, in Beijing, they have added 1,500 cameras just this year alone. They see everything. There is nobody jaywalking here because they could get a ticket right away.”
But while the Fox veteran was grumbling about his crew’s brush with Chinese law enforcement, Beijing residents were turning their own cameras on his team.
Footage uploaded to Douyin—China’s version of TikTok—and shared on X by Chinese journalist Li Jingjing of CGTN, the English-language news channel of state-run China Global Television Network, showed the Fox crew filming in the middle of heavy traffic. Baier could be seen walking in the road as bicycles and electric scooters weaved around him.
“While Fox News is complaining they got a ticket for illegal parking ... this is what his team is doing,” Jingjing wrote alongside the clip, which drew more than 1 million views and prompted online mockery over the irony of the anchor’s surveillance lecture.
Another viral clip, shared by social media influencer Mario Nawfal, showed Baier marveling at a barista robot whipping up his coffee.
The anchor’s segment leaned on the eye-popping scale of China’s monitoring apparatus—bolstered by a December report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which estimated that some 600 million cameras are in operation across the country.
The study found that Beijing is rapidly bolting AI-driven face-scanning and movement-tracking tools onto its existing surveillance network. Documents from a Shanghai district cited in the ASPI report describe plans to allow AI-powered cameras and drones to “automatically discover and intelligently enforce the law.”
Baier said what he had experienced raised questions about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) intentions.
“Now, there are real questions with the CCP’s goal is about citizen tracking and social scoring,” he said. “They say it’s to make everybody feel safe. These cameras are watching every minute. They’re everywhere.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Fox News for comment.
