The pictures that should break the hearts of all Australian parents

These heartbreaking pictures have been drawn for an Australian mum who sadly can’t see them. Her fate is something all Aussies should reflect on.

The world is at a dangerous crossroads. The US is a basket case, with a president who is clearly demented and whose predecessor and possible successor is clearly mad.

Meanwhile the unquestionable emerging power is China, the most populous and soon to be most powerful country on earth, whose government has lurched from gradual liberalisation to shameless authoritarianism in barely a heartbeat.

Somewhere to the bottom and left of these two superpowers is Australia, caught in the crossfire of our biggest trading partner and our greatest ally. No other nation has more to lose in this seismic global struggle.

And somewhere in a secret prison in Beijing is a woman who could provide the key to avoiding this existential threat.

Her name is Cheng Lei. She is an Australian journalist who has been locked up by the Chinese Communist Party and forbidden any contact from her partner and young children for two years.

One of the drawings by the children of Australian Chinese Journalist Cheng Lei.

Another heartbreaking picture.

Her children have drawn pictures for their mother, but she is unable to see them because of authorities in Beijing.

I will just pause for a moment to let any parent reading this reflect on that fact. As a father of three young children myself I have no shame or hesitation in saying such a fate would instantly send me mad with fury and sorrow.

The cold hard facts of the case are cold but hardly hard. Cheng Lei is accused of passing on state secrets but no specific accusation has been given and her secret trial was over in a few perfunctory hours.

Meanwhile she has languished in jail for more than 700 days without even being sentenced.

Such is communist justice.

Lei’s literally unspeakable and obviously unjust suffering is a grotesquely intimate personification of the current state of Australian-Chinese relations. But it also has the potential to lift that pall.

This was saliently noted by SBS journalist Anna Henderson during the infamous National Press Club address by China’s ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian.

As highlighted by the excellent Daily Telegraph documentary “Disappeared”, Henderson posed a simple question to Xiao: Could the Chinese government not demonstrate a modicum of goodwill to Australia by either lifting trade sanctions or releasing Cheng Lei?

It was a perfect question, elegantly balancing the pragmatic weight of billions of dollars with the weightless principle of human liberty.

Australian Chinese Journalist Cheng Lei.

Naturally the Chinese ambassador obfuscated and made vague and misleading comments about Cheng Lei’s condition but there is little doubt it would have made its way back to Beijing. Everything does.

Thus the seed was planted. Chinese benevolence in the case of a dubiously detained Australian journalist could be the crack in the door to opening up diplomatic dialogue with Australia again.

Should the CCP find the courage and good sense to release Cheng Lei — no doubt under the pretext of finding her guilty but graciously commuting her sentence on the basis of time served — it would be an extraordinary double win for both the Albanese government and the Chinese.

Albo and his team could claim it as a win for careful pragmatism over belligerence and the Chinese could claim it as evidence of their reasonableness and commitment to good global relations — while of course at the same time maintaining they were justified in whatever actions they took.

I don’t pretend to be a policy giant or an international man of mystery but I do know a bit about foreign affairs and a lot about politics and I can assure all the part-time spooks who are reading this that such an outcome would be a seriously good deal for both sides.

It would make Australia appear as tactically strong and make China appear as morally sound and these are precisely the two qualities that both nations are struggling to convey to both themselves and the international community.

Of course the catch is that I have now put this in a column and the usual golden rule of diplomacy is that if it is conducted in public it is always doomed to fail.

But releasing Cheng Lei — with whatever caveats are required — is such a public idea, and such a sensible idea, that it is impossible to keep it to oneself.

Eventually she will be free. The choice for the People’s Republic of China is whether they do this under sufferance or as a gesture of goodwill to a world that will welcome them for it.

Watch The Daily Telegraph’s exclusive documentary about Cheng Lei’s imprisonment