A Chinese-Australian journalist who was convicted on murky espionage charges and detained in China for three years has returned home, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said yesterday.
Cheng Lei (成蕾), 48, worked for the international department of state broadcaster China Central Television.
She has reunited with her two children in Melbourne, Albanese said.
Photo: AFP / Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade / Sarah Hodges
Her return comes ahead of Albanese’s planned visit to Beijing this year on a date yet to be announced. He is to become the first Australian prime minister to visit the Chinese capital in seven years.
Albanese said that Australia had traded nothing with China for Cheng’s release.
“Her release follows the completion of judicial processes in China,” he said.
The Chinese Ministry of State Security said that Cheng had been approached by a foreign organization in May 2020 and provided them with state secrets she had obtained on the job in contravention of a confidentiality clause signed with her employer. A police statement did not name the organization or say what the secrets were.
A court in Beijing convicted her of illegally providing state secrets abroad and she was sentenced to two years and 11 months, the statement said.
She was deported yesterday after serving her sentence, presumably because she had already been detained for that long.
“Her return brings an end to a very difficult few years for Ms Cheng and her family,” Albanese said. “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.”
The FreeChengLei account on X, formerly known as Twitter, posted a photo of Cheng with Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong (黃英賢) and Australian Ambassador to China Graham Fletcher.
The post included a quote, apparently from Cheng, that read: “Tight hugs, teary screams, holding my kids in the spring sunshine. Trees shimmy from the breeze. I can see the entirety of the sky now! Thank you Aussies.”
Albanese’s government has been lobbying for the release of Cheng and another Chinese Australian held in China since 2019, Yang Hengjun (楊恒均).
Albanese’s reference to China’s judicial system suggested that Cheng had recently been sentenced after she was convicted in a closed-court trial last year on national security charges.
Albanese said he spoke to Cheng in Melbourne, where the children of the Chinese-born journalist have been living with their grandmother.
“She [Cheng] is a very strong and resilient person ... and when I spoke with her she was delighted to be back in Melbourne,” Albanese said.
Albanese did not say whether Yang was also likely to be released.
“We continue to advocate for Dr Yang’s interests, rights and well-being with the Chinese authorities at all levels,” Albanese said.
Yang, a 58-year-old writer and democracy blogger who has been detained since 2019, told his family in August that he was afraid he would die in a Beijing detention center after being diagnosed with a kidney cyst, prompting supporters to demand his release for medical treatment.
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