Australian-Chinese Journalist Released

Cheng was detained for three years before being released

Late last night Vancouver time it was a relief to see Australian-Chinese journalist Cheng Lei had been released after three years in detention in China and was now back in Melbourne.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong greeted Cheng with a hug at the airport.

"She was in extraordinarily good spirits. I think I was more emotional than she was," Wong said of Cheng. "I think she's pretty tough. She looked great."

Cheng (left) and Wong hugged at the airport

Wong said she had promised Cheng's two children, 11 and 14, that the government would do all it could to bring their mother home.

"It was really moving to meet Cheng Lei yesterday and speak to her kids who are not much older than mine," Wong said.

She added she encouraged Cheng to thrive and be healthy and happy now that she's free. "That's what all Australians want you to be," Wong said.

It is believed improved relations between Australia and China helped secure Cheng's release, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had "good, constructive" meetings with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang about Cheng's case. 

In the last two weeks a deal was struck where Cheng would plead guilty to charges related to state secrets with no additional time in custody.

When she was working for CGTN, she was arrested in August 2020, with China's Ministry of State Security saying Cheng had provided a foreign organisation with state secrets she had obtained on the job in violation of a confidentiality clause signed with her employer. A police statement did not name the organisation or say what the secrets were.

Cheng has returned to her family

A court in Beijing convicted her of illegally providing state secrets abroad and was sentenced to two yeras and 11 months, the statement said.

Meanwhile Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the Chinese judicial system tried the case " in accordance with the law, fully safeguarding the rights enjoyed by the person concerned in accordance with the law."

However, in a letter that was made public in August, Cheng wrote how she only had sunlight in her cell for 10 hours a year, and to keep mentally fit, she recalled every place she had visited and moments, both special and simple, like the experience of sand between her toes to sunsets.

Nevertheless, Geoff Raby, a former Australian ambassador to China and a friend of Cheng, described China's explanation that she had been released according to the law as a "face-saving solution."

He said Wong and Albanese deserved credit for stabilising bilateral relations with China, and bringing up Cheng's case at every opportunity.

"Persistence and constantly coming back to this issue and advocating on her behalf in private but at very senior levels... trickles down through the Chinese system and I think the result we see thankfully... yesterday is a product of all that effort," Raby told Australian Broadcasting Corp.