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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 China-Australia relations under a conservative government, and has now been released as the current center-left leadership tries to repair ties with its biggest trading partner.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday that Cheng was met at the airport 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 is now with her family. “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.”
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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.
She was detained in August 2020 and was formally arrested six months later, charged with “providing state secrets to foreign forces.” In March of last year, Cheng was tried in a closed-door trial in Beijing where Australian diplomats were barred from entering. Her verdict was deferred and has not been made public since then.
Cheng’s arrest 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.
In 2020, Australia under then-prime minister Scott Morrison led calls for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, drawing Chinese retaliation in the form of steep tariffs on imports of Australian barley, beef, wine and other goods.
Beijing holds closed-door trial for Australian journalist Cheng Lei
Cheng’s release comes weeks before Albanese is expected to visit Beijing 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 any more.”
The timing of Cheng’s release suggested that politics was a factor in China’s handling of her case, he added.
There has also 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 few years ago, have also resumed.
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.
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 suffers serious kidney problems. Yang was detained at Guangzhou airport while on his way to visit family in China.
He was later charged with espionage and, like Cheng, was tried behind closed doors. Although the trial finished in May 2021, a verdict on his case has also been delayed.
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“It releases some of the pressure on the Chinese government,” said Feng Chongyi, an associate professor at the University of Technology in Sydney and a friend of Yang’s. “Yang has been detained one year longer and is in a worse situation in terms of health.”
Cheng’s detention in 2020 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 the Australian embassy and fled China after Chinese state security agents said that exit bans had been placed on them.
Bloomberg News journalist Haze Fan, a Chinese national and a friend of Cheng’s, 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.
In an open letter marking more than 1,000 days in detention, Cheng wrote about missing her home country.
“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.”
Kuo reported from Taipei, Taiwan