The Australian journalist Cheng Lei – jailed for three years in China on ill-defined allegations of sharing Chinese state secrets overseas – has been freed and reunited with her family in Australia.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese,said she had been returned to Australia on Wednesday afternoon.
“When I spoke to Cheng Lei I welcomed her home on behalf of all Australians,” Albanese said, describing her as a strong and resilient person.
Albanese was opaque about the details or conditions of Cheng’s release.
“Her release follows the completion of judicial processes in China,” he said.
In a later interview with ABC radio, Albanese was asked whether Cheng was pardoned. “No, it was completed with time served in detention being taken into account,” he replied.
On Wednesday afternoon China’s national security body released a statement saying Cheng had been deported “in accordance with the law after serving her sentence”. It also provided some further details of the allegations against her, including revealing that her sentence was two years and 11 months in prison, and deportation.
“In May 2020, Cheng Lei was coaxed by personnel from an overseas agency, violated the confidentiality clause signed with the employing unit, and illegally provided the state secrets she mastered at work to the overseas agency through her mobile phone,” it said.
“After filing an investigation, the Beijing National Security Bureau took criminal coercive measures against Cheng Lei in August 2020. After Cheng Lei arrived at the case, she truthfully confessed the facts of the crime and voluntarily pleaded guilty and accepted punishment.”
The former business anchor for the state-owned China Global Television Network (CGTN) was detained by security services in August 2020, and held, initially, in “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL) – the name of China’s secretive detention network which allows authorities to hold a person without charge for up to six months, and deny access to lawyers, consular services and family.
RSDL has been characterised by UN experts as a form of enforced disappearance with risks of torture.
Cheng was not formally charged until February 2021, when authorities said she was suspected of “illegally supplying state secrets overseas”. Her trial was held in secret more than a year later, and a verdict repeatedly delayed.
China’s opaque judicial system has a conviction rate of more than 99.8%, and there is almost no transparency in national security cases.
In June, marking three years in detention, Cheng wrote a “love letter” to Australia saying she longed for sunlight, the outdoors and her family.
“I miss the sun. In my cell, the sunlight shines through the window, but I can stand in it for only 10 hours a year.
“Most of all I miss my children,” Cheng said.
Another Australian detained on national security charges, the democracy activist and blogger Dr Yang Hengjun has not been released.
Yang, a former Chinese state official but an Australian citizen since 2002, was detained in Guangzhou in 2019.
He was charged in August 2019 with espionage, and tried in May 2021. He has still not received a verdict, with a Beijing court granting multiple extensions on the deadline for handing down a decision.
He has been detained in a 1.2-metre-wide cell in Beijing with two other prisoners for four years, and his health is failing, suffering, in particular, from an acute kidney condition.
“If something happens with my health and I die in here, people outside won’t know the truth. That is frustrating,” he said in a recent message from detention.
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Yang’s PhD supervisor in Australia, Prof Chongyi Feng, said: “The release of Cheng Lei clearly shows that there is no legal obstacle at all for the Chinese government to release Yang Hengjun.”
Albanese said the government would continue to advocate for Yang’s release.
The prime minister said “good constructive meetings” with Chinese leaders had led to Cheng’s release.
“Dialogue is always a good idea, even with people who you have disagreements with.”
Albanese met the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, in Jakarta last month and urged him to understand that Australians “want to see Cheng Lei reunited with her children”.
Cheng’s release comes just weeks before Albanese is due to travel to China for talks with the president, Xi Jinping. The trip, if it occurs in late October or early November as expected, will coincide with the 50th anniversary of Gough Whitlam’s first trip to China as prime minister.
Albanese said he spoke with Cheng when she landed in Melbourne.
“She is a very strong and resilient person though, and when I spoke with her she was delighted to be back in Melbourne.”
Annelise Nielsen, a friend and former colleague of Cheng’s, said her release was “just the absolute best-case scenario we could have hoped for”.
Nielsen, who is now Sky News Australia’s Washington correspondent, reported that Cheng flew back to Australia on a commercial flight accompanied by the Australian ambassador, Graham Fletcher.
Nielsen gave credit to Wong. “She picked this up and ran with it from the first day she came into office and we’ve been so grateful for that,” Nielsen said.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, welcomed Cheng’s release.
The pair urged the Albanese government to “use all available diplomatic means to equally secure” Yang’s return to Australia.
The Chinese ambassador, Xiao Qian, previously expressed his personal sympathy for Cheng multiple times over the past 12 months, which had raised hopes that a resolution might soon be brokered.
Additional reporting by Chi Hui Lin
