China has now struck back against Simon Cheng after the former UK consulate worker in Hong Kong claimed that he was tortured while under detention in the mainland with videos showing him soliciting prostitutes and “confessing” to doing so.

Surveillance footage released by Shenzhen police shows Cheng apparently visiting prostitutes three times between July 23 and August 8. The videos show him arriving in the lobby of a hotel and walking to rooms alongside women before leaving a couple of hours later.

Cheng was arrested on August 8 before crossing the border back into his home city of Hong Kong. He was kept under detention for 15 days before being released. To his family and friends, he had disappeared.

Police also shared video of Cheng’s “confession” in which the 28-year-old says to the camera: “It’s so embarrassing and shameful. I am ashamed to meet my girlfriend and family. I feel very guilty about this,” before explaining that he is too ashamed to contact his family or a lawyer.

Shenzhen police in S China's Guangdong on Thur released a clip of Simon Cheng, a former Chinese employee in Britain's HK Consulate, who was detained for 15 days for soliciting prostitutes.

The video clip showed Cheng asked police not to inform his family about the detention. pic.twitter.com/wpodd3vxgs — People's Daily, China (@PDChina) November 21, 2019

Televised confessions like this are certainly nothing new in China. In this case though, Chinese state media have taken the additional step of even sharing a still from footage taken from a police interview of one of the women who says she provided Cheng with sexual services at his request.

In another video provided by the police, two female workers from the message parlor confessed they provided illegal sexual services at the request of Simon Cheng. (To protect the women involved, this video was not made public.) pic.twitter.com/B06hMvljNY — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) November 21, 2019

In his own lengthy description of his time in Chinese detention, Cheng writes that he was made to confess to “soliciting prostitution” after days of torture and threats. He also says that he read out another confession for “betraying the motherland.”

Cheng made international headlines on Wednesday after giving interviews in which he described being blindfolded, shackled, hooded, beaten, and tortured in a variety of ways by China’s secret police who accused him of being a Chinese secret agent fomenting arrest in Hong Kong.

He also mentioned that police prevented him from wearing his glasses, causing him to feel dizzy during the majority of his detention. In the “confession” video, Cheng is not wearing his spectacles.

China, meanwhile, has insisted that Cheng was detained in accordance with the law on prostitution charges and that Cheng’s family and friends were not informed on his own request because of the shame that he felt.

When asked directly by the BBC’s John Sudworth if he did pay for sex, Cheng answered: “I don’t want to focus on the question of whether I solicited a prostitute, because that’s exactly what they want. So, I just want to state clearly that I did nothing regrettable to the people I cherish and love.”

No longer feeling safe in Hong Kong, Cheng has fled the city and is now seeking asylum elsewhere. In November, he was asked to resign his post at the consulate though the British government says that it is working on bringing both him and his fiancee to the UK.