After more than three years of detention in China on national security charges, Australian journalist Cheng Lei has finally returned home, announced Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, on Wednesday. Cheng Lei, aged 48, was a business television anchor for Chinese state television when she was apprehended in August 2020, accused of sharing state secrets with a foreign country.
Cheng’s secret trial in March 2022 eventually led to her release, and she arrived in Melbourne, reuniting with her two children and family, as shared by Albanese during a press conference.
The Australian Prime Minister expressed the government’s long-standing efforts to reunite Cheng with her children, emphasizing that her return is a cause for celebration not just for her family and friends but for all Australians. Cheng’s release came after the conclusion of legal proceedings in China.
China’s State Security Ministry, for the first time, disclosed details of the charges against Cheng, revealing that she had pleaded guilty to illegally sending state secrets abroad in connection to her work with a state media outlet. Following her two-year and 11-month sentence, she was deported.
Throughout her ordeal, Australian diplomats were denied access to her trial, and Cheng never publicly commented on her case.
This release follows a pattern in which China has previously detained foreign nationals on national security charges only to release them with little explanation, including the case of two Canadians detained for more than three years on espionage charges, who were released in September 2021, coinciding with a deal involving Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou and U.S. prosecutors to end a bank fraud case against her.
