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SYDNEY — Australian journalist Cheng Lei has returned home after three years of detention in China, the Australian government announced Wednesday.
Cheng was detained during an extraordinarily turbulent period in relations with China under a conservative Australian government and has now been released as the current center-left leadership tries to repair ties with its biggest trading partner.
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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday that Cheng was met at the airport in Melbourne by Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
“Her return brings an end to a very difficult few years for her family,” Albanese told reporters in Melbourne, where Cheng, 48, has been reunited with her family, including two children. “The government has been seeking this for a long period of time, and her return will be warmly welcomed not just by her family and friends, but by all Australians.”
Wonderful. Penny Wong greets Cheng Lei at Melbourne Airport. Pic via @dfat pic.twitter.com/AflvpWjVBc
— Stephen Dziedzic (@stephendziedzic) October 11, 2023
Cheng was a high-profile anchor covering business and politics for CGTN, the English-language state broadcaster owned by China Central Television, which presents positive coverage of China.
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She was detained in August 2020, the same year Prime Minister Scott Morrison repeatedly called for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. This drew Chinese retaliation in the form of steep tariffs on imports of Australian barley, beef, wine and other goods and prompted suspicion that Cheng was held as part of the diplomatic spat.
Cheng was formally arrested six months after being detained, charged with “providing state secrets to foreign forces.” This came a day after Australia called for a United Nations investigation into allegations of widespread sexual abuse in Chinese detention centers in the Xinjiang region, angering Beijing.
Beijing holds closed-door trial for Australian journalist Cheng Lei
Albanese’s government, which took office last year, has tried to reset relations, and there has been movement on trade issues in recent months, with China removing tariffs on barley and restrictions on coal and hay. Ministerial visits, which had ground to a halt a few years ago, have also resumed.
Albanese is expected to visit Beijing soon, in what would be the first such trip by an Australian prime minister in seven years.
“This is clearly done ahead of a prime ministerial visit, which sends a pretty strong signal that Beijing wants that visit to be a success,” said James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney. “I think Beijing was aware that if Albanese went and returned ‘empty-handed,’ that could be a domestic political problem for him. He doesn’t have that problem anymore.”
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The timing of Cheng’s release suggested that politics was a factor in China’s handling of her case, he added.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Wednesday that Cheng had been deported after serving her sentence.
Wang said Cheng, whose verdict had not been disclosed after a closed-door trial in March last year, had been sentenced to two years and 11 months in prison for the crime of providing state secrets overseas, Wang said. Cheng was in detention for a total of three years.
“Cheng Lei was deported … in accordance with the law after serving her sentence,” he said.
Albanese said Wednesday that he had raised the issue of Cheng’s detention with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other officials. But Laurenceson said her case also had become a cause of concern for academics and members of Australia’s Chinese business community.
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In an open letter marking more than 1,000 days in detention, Cheng wrote about missing her home country.
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“It is not the same in here, I haven’t seen a tree in three years,” she wrote in the letter released by Australian officials. “I miss the sun. … Every year the bedding is taken into the sun for two hours to air. When it came back last time, I wrapped myself in the doona [comforter] and pretended I was being hugged by my family under the sun.”
Cheng’s partner, Nick Coyle, executive director of the China-Australia Chamber of Commerce, complained last year that she was surviving on white rice and that her consular visits had been cut off, even though they were conducted remotely. But Coyle said last month there was now “goodwill from both sides” in finding a resolution.
Advocates lobbying for the release of Yang Hengjun, an Australian writer and academic who was detained in 2019, worry that the latest news may make it more difficult for Australia to negotiate the release of Yang, who has serious kidney problems. Yang was detained at Guangzhou Airport while visiting China with his family.
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He was later charged with espionage and, like Cheng, tried behind closed doors. Although the trial finished in May 2021, a verdict on his case has also been delayed.
“It’s a morally indefensible position that the Chinese government hold two Australians as hostages,” said Feng Chongyi, an associate professor at the University of Technology in Sydney and a friend of Yang. “It releases some of the pressure on the Chinese government,” he said, referring to Cheng’s return home. “Yang has been detained one year longer and is in a worse situation in terms of health.”
James Paterson, a senator representing Cheng’s home state of Victoria, said her release was “wonderful news” that he hoped would also bode well for Yang. But Paterson, who belongs to the opposing conservative coalition, also sounded a note of caution over the improvement in bilateral relations.
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“The foreign interference and the cyberattacks and the espionage are all ongoing sources of tension in the relationship,” he said. “They continue to make it not a normal bilateral relationship, but a complex and challenged one.”
Australia asks why Chinese authorities detained one of its citizens in potential new diplomatic row
After Cheng’s release, China’s Ministry of State Security disclosed details of her case for the first time. It said in a statement that in May 2020, Cheng had been solicited by someone from a “foreign organization.” Cheng, according to the ministry, provided “state secrets obtained during the course of her work” to that organization through her mobile phone.
The statement, released on Wednesday, said Cheng had confessed and accepted her sentence. Forced confessions are not uncommon in China’s court system, where the conviction rate is as high as 99 percent.
Cheng and Yang were arrested at a time of growing criticism of Beijing’s use of “hostage diplomacy.” Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained in China for three years following Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of U.S. investigators. Kovrig and Spavor were released in 2021, when Meng reached a deal with the U.S. Justice Department.
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Cheng’s detention in 2020 also shocked and alarmed foreign journalists working in China at a time of increased intimidation of the media. Shortly after her arrest, two other Australian journalists sheltered at Australian diplomatic missions after Chinese state security agents said exit bans had been placed on them. Australian diplomats negotiated their departure from the country.
Bloomberg News journalist Haze Fan, a Chinese national and a friend of Cheng, was detained in December 2020 on charges of endangering national security. She was released on bail in January last year. In March of 2020, China expelled about a dozen American journalists working for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
Kuo reported and Vic Chiang contributed reporting from Taipei, Taiwan.
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