There's been an active contingent of China Twitter loudly saying for the past few months that academics and journalists should be speaking out more about Xinjiang because the likelihood of visa revoking has been vastly overstated. Recent reporting seems to have touched a special nerve and the reactions are far more extreme than other negative China stories that journalists have weathered in the past.

She's lucky they were nice enough to wait out the rest of her visa instead of revoking it and deporting her on the spot. Shrewd move on their part for that, btw. If she was a citizen they would have just disappeared or killed her.

(full disclosure: I used to work with the reporter, but that was many years ago)