Australian minister credits improved relations with China for the release of a detained journalist

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Thursday credited improved relations with China for the return home this week of an Australian journalist whose three-year detention in China in a murky espionage case had strained ties.

A teary-eyed Wong had greeted Cheng Lei with a hug at the airport Wednesday in Melbourne, where Cheng’s two children, 11 and 14, have been raised by their grandmother while Cheng was detained.

“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.”

Wong revealed that she had promised Cheng’s children some time ago 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 said 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 added.

The FreeChengLei account on the X social media platform described her reunion with her family. “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,” the post made on her behalf by her partner Nick Coyle said.

The Australian newspaper reported the government learned in the past two weeks of a deal in which Cheng would plead guilty to charges relating to state secrets with no additional time in custody. Wong declined to comment on the report, citing Cheng’s privacy.

But Wong said improved bilateral relations since her center-left Labor Party government was elected last year after nine years of conservative rule had paid dividends.

“We’ve made clear since we were elected that we wanted to stabilize our relationship with China, we wanted to engage and I think you’ve seen some of the benefits of engagement,” Wong said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese plans to visit Beijing this year at a date yet to be set. He would become the first Australian prime minister to visit China in seven years.

Albanese said he had had “good, constructive” meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang about Cheng’s case.

Cheng, who was born in China and migrated to Australia with her family at age 10, had worked for China’s state broadcaster CCTV. She was arrested in August 2020 when bilateral relations were plumbing new depths.

China’s Ministry of State Security said Cheng provided a foreign organization 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.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that 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.”

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

Albanese and Wong deserved congratulations for stabilizing the bilateral relationship and for raising Cheng’s case with Chinese leaders at every opportunity, Raby said.

“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 of that effort,” Raby told Australian Broadcasting Corp.