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.
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
RSS