Inside the years of negotiations to secure the release of Cheng Lei

Singapore: The moment the Australian government knew Cheng Lei was finally free was when she was on a plane from Beijing to Melbourne.

Years of persistent advocacy from Foreign Minister Penny Wong, her predecessor Marise Payne and Department of Foreign Affairs officials culminated in a month-long final dash that ended when the Beijing People’s Court finally sentenced the 48-year-old Melbourne mother on Wednesday, triggering her deportation after three dark years in a Chinese cell on national security charges.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Cheng Lei embrace on the journalist’s arrival to Australia.

“I can see the entirety of the sky now!” Cheng said hours after arriving home and holding her two children for the first time in years. “Tight hugs, teary screams, holding my kids in the spring sunshine.”

Wong was waiting for her at Melbourne Airport. The Indigenous artworks, Australian shells and music books in the airport lounge were a world away from the Beijing cell Cheng had inhabited for so long that she struggled to imagine what it was like to have the breeze hit her skin.

Wong wiped a tear from her eye as she handed the phone to Cheng. On the other end was the prime minister to welcome her home. “I am so pleased to be able to talk to you,” Anthony Albanese said.

While she was in captivity, Wong had spoken to Cheng’s two children.

“I made them a promise some time ago we would do everything, I would do everything I could, to bring her home,” she said.

The Australian government’s strategy was to stabilise the relationship so that there would be more opportunities to raise Cheng’s case with Chinese leaders including Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Premier Li Qiang and President Xi Jinping.

After years of hostility, China had cut all ministerial contact with the previous government of Scott Morrison and restricted the ability of embassy officials to speak with their Chinese counterparts.

But a new government and a substantial shift in tone from Labor meant Chinese officials were suddenly picking up the phone again.

Chinese President Xi Jinping with Honduran President Xiomara Castro in June. Albanese is due to visit Beijing later this year. Credit: AFP

The discussions could begin by going down the list of $20 billion in trade sanctions, but the cases of Cheng case and fellow detained Australian writer Yang Hengjun were also raised.

The more Cheng’s case was mentioned, not just by each level of government but also by business leaders and the media, the more it became clear her detention was an impediment to improving China and Australia’s relationship.

Cheng was detained as diplomatic relations with Australia fell to their lowest ebb in 2022 over human rights and national security disputes.

But after three years the hostility with Australia had become counterproductive for Beijing because it pushed up prices of imports, restricted markets for Chinese investors and had not achieved any real policy concessions from the Australian government.

It also made the optics of Albanese’s upcoming visit to Beijing, an important propaganda opportunity for the Chinese government on the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations, much more difficult.

The Australian government leveraged that public unease while keeping the communication channels open with their Chinese counterparts by insisting Albanese planned to visit Beijing this year.

Rather than trying to get both Cheng and Yang out at once, they split their public remarks about the two cases, recognising that Cheng faced lesser charges while Yang’s background with links to the Chinese government and public criticism made his case more complicated.

By September there was suddenly a flurry of activity. Wong had led the campaign, but the grunt work was done by Australia’s ambassador to China Graham Fletcher and Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Jan Adams.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Jakarta.Credit: Twitter

The days leading up to and after Albanese’s meeting with Premier Li Qiang at the East Asia Forum in Jakarta on September 7 showed the first real signs that Cheng’s release might be within reach. The Chinese Foreign Ministry made no mention of Cheng’s case being discussed, but it was a focus for Albanese, who emerged to declare that he had not only raised Cheng’s case but also that of the detained Yang and other Australians who are still stuck in China facing the death penalty.

“We had a frank and constructive discussion,” Albanese said.

The timing and Xi’s no-show at the G20 in Delhi was helpful. Two days later he sat next to Li again at the G20 leaders’ dinner. On the menu, there were foxtail millet leaf crisps with a yoghurt sphere. The dish was called “a breath of fresh air” by the Indian hosts.

“That was an opportunity in a less formal way to be able to have discussions,” Albanese said. “Dialogue is always a good idea, even with people who you have disagreements with.”

Australian journalist Cheng Lei, seen here on air on Chinese English-language news channel CGTN, has returned to Australia after a long period of detention in China.Credit: CGTN

In meeting after meeting the Australian negotiators impressed upon the Chinese that Australians wanted to see Cheng reunited with her young kids. The framing turned Cheng from one of hundreds of foreigners languishing anonymously in Chinese jails into a mother and a symbol of the broader relationship.

But the biggest hurdle was how to get the University of Queensland graduate out of jail without China losing face.

The Chinese legal system can never be wrong. The courts are controlled by the government, so they have to justify a way to both find someone guilty and set them free at the same time.

In Cheng’s case that led to more than a year of sentencing extension requests by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and ultimately to the lowest possible jail time for her alleged crimes of sharing state secrets, two years and 11 months. The sentencing was timed exactly so that she could be released and then immediately deported.

Cheng was sentenced for violating a confidentiality clause signed with her employer and “illegally providing the state secrets she mastered at work to an overseas agency”.

Cheng had spent the eight years before she was suddenly detained working for Chinese state TV network CGTN. In public, she was a picture of Chinese state media restraint. In private, she was increasingly critical of China’s handling of COVID-19.

“The horrors of realising how this tragedy is made by man are very uneasy to swallow,” she posted on Facebook in February 2020.

But the actual claims against her remain shrouded in secrecy. Neither Cheng, her family, nor the Department of Foreign Affairs have commented on her sentencing.

Former foreign minister Marise Payne was also formerly involved in the negotiations to bring Cheng Lei home.Credit: James Brickwood

Within the government, the negotiations around Cheng’s release were treated as if they were part of the National Security Committee.

“That’s the way that national security, diplomacy and intelligence should operate. Not as a political game,” said Albanese. “These are serious issues.”

People with knowledge of the negotiations, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation, said it was likely that there would be restrictions placed on how much Cheng could say publicly because it might impact future negotiations.

“The judicial processes were completed in China, and we are just very pleased to have Cheng Lei home,” Albanese said on Thursday.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks with Professor Sean Turnell at Parliament House last November.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Cheng is now the fourth imprisoned Australian to be brought home in the past year.

Economist Sean Turnell arrived back in November after being detained for two years in Myanmar. In May, 88-year-old doctor Ken Elliott was released by al-Qaeda after spending seven years in captivity. And in July, Chau Van Kham, a pro-democracy activist and retired baker from south-western Sydney was released from a Vietnamese jail after four years in captivity over what supporters maintained were trumped-up terrorism charges.

“It was one of those rare moments that you have in this job,” Wong said after Cheng arrived on Thursday. “I think I was more emotional than she was.”

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