Media pawn in Beijing’s game

Nothing about China’s current hostility towards Australia makes much sense. And nowhere is that more evident than in the continued incarceration of Chinese-born Australian journalist Cheng Lei as she begins her second year of severe custody in Beijing. Cheng, 49, a single mother of two young children, appears to be a pawn in a political game.

Twelve months on from the detention of Cheng – the prominent anchor for business programs on state-owned China Global Television Network and one of the best-known and most popular Australians in China – nothing has emerged that suggests China has gained any advantage from its unrelentingly brutal and opaque treatment of her.

Instead, as it faces certain controversy over whether the Winter Olympics should go ahead in China in February, Beijing has achieved further international opprobrium for the way it treats journalists, local and foreign, and others from countries with which it may be at loggerheads.

Since confirmation last February that Cheng was under investigation for “providing state secrets or intelligence to foreign entities”, there has been no formal charge or a court appearance. Neither has there been any evidence to support the allegation. The offence to which she has been linked is as vague as “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a charge regularly used in China to jail questioning journalists or lawyers.

Yet Beijing is continuing its ruthless treatment of Cheng that began, as Will Glasgow reports, when she was seized by China’s secret police and spirited away on August 13 last year. It was 10 days before colleagues knew she had been detained – and then only after management made them sign nondisclosure undertakings.

Despite the best efforts of the Australian embassy in Beijing and Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Cheng’s treatment in prison remains brutal. On the rare occasions when she is allowed a video call with Australian officials, she is brought into a room blindfolded, masked and handcuffed. Guards wear full personal protective equipment hazmat suits. Cheng is made to sit in a chair with a wooden restraint fixed across her lap so she cannot stand up before her blindfold and face mask are removed for the webcam interview. Guards tightly control topics that can be discussed.

Meanwhile, there appears to be an orchestrated campaign on WeChat, China’s most popular messaging app, denigrating Cheng as an Australian spy and accusing her of “betraying her motherland”. Cruelly, and despite repeated pleas, Cheng, who came to Australia at the age of nine with her family, has been denied permission to speak with her children, aged nine and 11, who are being cared for by her mother in Melbourne.

China has form in bringing espionage charges against the nationals of countries with which it is at loggerheads. The sentencing in Beijing on Thursday of Canadian businessman Michael Spavor to 11 years’ jail has been linked directly to the extradition battle in Canada over Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and daughter of its founder. Mr Spavor was arrested in 2018 just days after Ms Meng was detained in Canada.

Another Canadian arrested at the same time, Michael Kovrig, faces the same charges, while a third Canadian, Robert Schellenberg, a convicted drug smuggler who initially had been sentenced to 15 years’ prison, has been sentenced to death as the war of words between Beijing and Ottawa over Ms Meng rages on.

There is not much that is subtle about shortsighted Chinese bullying and coercion – much has changed in the China-Australia relationship under President Xi Jinping.

The speedy and relentless imposition of Xi’s New Era has swept away the old era of reform and opening up led by Deng Xiaoping. Sadly, Cheng is one of its many victims. Beijing has gained only further international disrepute by treating her in the way it has while continuing its incomprehensible, self-defeating attempt to coerce Australia.