Australian journalist Cheng Lei back home after China release

SYDNEY - Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who had been detained in China on national security charges for more than three years, returned home on Wednesday after being released, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

Ms Cheng, 48, was a business television anchor for Chinese state television.

She was detained in August 2020 for allegedly sharing state secrets with another country and tried in secret in March 2022.

She arrived in Melbourne and has been reunited with her two children and family, Mr Albanese told a press conference.

“Tight hugs, teary screams, holding my kids in the spring sunshine. Trees shimmy from the breeze,” she wrote on social media.

“I can see the entirety of the sky now! Thank you Aussies.”

Mr Albanese said his government had been seeking for Ms Cheng to be reunited with her children “for a long period of time and her return will be warmly welcomed not just by her family and friends, but by all Australians”.

Her release follows the completion of legal processes in China, he said.

China’s State Security Ministry, for the first time giving details of the charges against Ms Cheng, said she had pleaded guilty to charges of illegally sending state secrets abroad related to her work for a state media outlet.

She was deported after serving her sentence of two years and 11 months.

Australian diplomats were refused entry to her trial, and she has never publicly commented on the case.

Australia had repeatedly raised concerns about her detention, which came as China widened blocks on Australian exports amid a diplomatic dispute that is gradually easing.

“She is a very strong and resilient person,” said Mr Albanese, who said he has spoken to Ms Cheng.

In a letter to Australia released publicly in August, Ms Cheng wrote of missing her children, aged 11 and 14, who lived in Melbourne with their grandmother while she was detained.

“In my cell, the sunlight shines through the window but I can stand in it for only 10 hours a year,” she wrote in what she called a “love letter to 25 million people”.

Mr Albanese, who came to power in 2022 with a goal of improving relations with Australia’s biggest trade partner, said he expected to visit China in 2023.

There had been public pressure on Mr Albanese to secure Ms Cheng’s release before any official visit to China.

‘Progress’

Mr Albanese had previously said he raised Ms Cheng’s case with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Analysts said the release was a breakthrough, but differences remained.

“This is one of the more concrete signs that Australia is no longer being punished by China for comments and policy measures that Beijing had objected to,” said Mr Ryan Neelam, an analyst at the Lowy Institute think-tank. “So this does seem to suggest there is real progress... But it doesn’t completely change the overall structural difficulties that have been present.”

Mr Albanese said Australia “continued to advocate” for another detained Australian journalist, Yang Hengjun, who has been held since January 2019.

There has been no sign that Yang will be released and his situation remains grim, a close friend of the blogger told reporters on Wednesday.

A verdict in his national security trial has been repeatedly delayed.

Ms Cheng’s jail sentence was relatively light for the charge of leaking state secrets, said Mr David Zhang, a Beijing-based lawyer with Mo Shaoping Law Firm.

Professor James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, said Beijing was sending a “clear signal” with the release that it wanted Mr Albanese’s eventual visit to China to be a success.

“When the Albanese government came to power, the problems were in three baskets – no senior political dialogue, trade disruptions and the detained Australians. We’ve now had progress across the board,” Prof Laurenceson said.

China’s ambassador to Australia said it was necessary to maintain the momentum of stability and improvement in relations, adding that China regarded Australia as a friend, and Australia had no reason to regard China as a threat.

China has previously detained foreign nationals on national security charges only to release them with little explanation, including two Canadians who were detained for more than three years on espionage charges and released in September 2021, hours after Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou reached a deal with United States prosecutors to end a bank fraud case against her.

Beijing denied their arrests were linked.

The State Security Ministry said Ms Cheng had “voluntarily pleaded guilty and accepted the punishment”.

“In May 2020, Cheng Lei was solicited by someone from a foreign organisation and, in violation of the confidentiality clause signed with her employer, illegally provided state secrets obtained in the course of her work to the foreign organisation through her mobile phone,” it said.

Judicial authorities had tried the case in accordance with the law and fully guaranteed her rights, it said. REUTERS