Chinese-Aussie journo detained for 3 years in China returns to Australia
CANBERRA, Australia — A Chinese Australian journalist who was convicted on murky espionage charges and detained in China for three years has returned to Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday. Cheng Lei, 48, worked for the international department of China’s state broadcaster CCTV. She has reunited with her two children in Melbourne, Albanese said. Her return comes ahead of Albanese’s planned visit to Beijing this year on a date yet to be announced. He will become the first Australian prime minister to visit the Chinese capital in seven years. Albanese said Australia had traded nothing with China for Cheng’s release. “Her release follows the completion of judicial processes in China,” he said. China’s 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 violation 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 Wednesday 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 Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Australia’s 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. Bilateral relations have improved since Albanese’s center-left Labor Party was elected after nine years of conservative rule. Beijing has lifted several official and unofficial trade barriers on Australian exports. 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
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