China-Australia relations: journalist Cheng Lei’s release helped by improved Beijing ties says minister Penny Wong

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.”

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Detained Australian journalist Cheng Lei returns home after 3-year detention in China

Detained Australian journalist Cheng Lei returns home after 3-year detention in China

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 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.

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

China’s Ministry of State Security said Cheng 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.

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

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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 stabilising 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.