China’s snow job can’t erase Aussie ties

Monday is the 550th day since Australian Cheng Lei was nabbed by Chinese agents in the Winter Olympics host city. Now she is on a long list of subjects our Olympians handle with care.

Australian journalist Cheng Lei has now been behind bars for 18 months. Picture: AFP

Monday is the 10th day of the Beijing Winter Games.

It’s also the 550th day since Australian journalist Cheng Lei was nabbed by Chinese agents in the Olympic host city.

The Queensland University graduate has now been behind bars for 18 months.

She still hasn’t been allowed to see her two young children.

No trial date has been set.

The single mother – who was one of the most high-profile Australians in China – now features on a long list of subjects our Olympians have been advised to handle with care at these intensely political Games.

Snowboarding legend Scotty James did his best to negotiate the difficult terrain after he bagged his silver on Friday.

“I’m sorry about those circumstances,” he said after being awarded his medal at the man-made snow town just an hour away by fast train from where Cheng was ­arrested on August 13, 2020.

The wizard from Warrandyte and the prisoner in Beijing have a backstory.

Snowboarder Scotty James with his silver medal after the men’s halfpipe event at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Picture: Getty Images

They met in Beijing in late December 2019 when Cheng interviewed James in front of a business crowd at an Australian-backed steakhouse about his path to the 2022 Games.

The night at Hurricane’s Grill left an impression.

James became Cheng’s favourite member of Australia’s Winter Olympics team, and she recently told Australian diplomats she hoped to watch him compete.

That was after her prison wardens said she and her cellmates would be allowed to watch some of what China’s President Xi Jinping calls an “inclusive, open and clean Games”.

Whether she knows James won silver will remain a mystery until her next monthly online consular visit with Australian ­officials – her only ­contact with the world outside her cell.

“I hope she got to tune in. I hope she enjoyed it,” said James, when asked about a situation that is bizarre even by the standards of these Winter Games.

What is like to win Olympic silver with a fan cheering you on from a Beijing prison cell?

“Sorry, no comment on that,” said James.

And fair enough, too – he was still hours from flying out of China to his base in the US.

The situation is the same for athletes from all around the world – and for good reason.

Only a few weeks ago, a ­senior official on the Beijing 2022 organising committee warned that any speech against Chinese laws would be “subject to certain punishment”.

If asked about the more than one million Uighurs who have been sent to re-education camps, or the snuffing of civic life in Hong Kong, or the awful plight of Cheng or fellow Australian Yang Hengjun, or about all the others trapped in China’s dark prisons, Olympians have been advised to keep quiet – at least while they are in the People’s ­Republic.

It has contributed to a surreal environment inside the Olympics bubble, one that is completely ­removed from the world outside it.

After The Australian spoke to James about his imprisoned fan, the silver medallist was interviewed by Chinese state media.

They had three questions for him: was he enjoying his life in China? Was the food good in the Olympic village? Had he tried Beijing duck?

The Swiss snowboarder who took the bronze had been asked the same three questions minutes earlier.

Cheng – an anchor on China Global Television Network, China’s English-language state broadcaster – was a different kind of state media employee.

She was hugely respected in the Beijing journalism ­community.

Her colleagues loved her. She even coined CGTN’s official ­slogan, “See the difference”, in an all-staff competition when the network was rebranding, as The Australian revealed last year.

Cheng joined the network a decade ago when engaging critically with the world around her and working for Chinese state media did not seem to be completely incompatible.

That has all changed in the late Xi era.

In a different political regime, right now she would be a key part of Beijing’s English language media team covering the Olympics. Instead, her imprisonment on vague “state secrets” charges contributed to the Australian government’s decision to join with the US, Canada, Japan and others in a diplomatic boycott of these Olympics.

Reports on the 46-year-old’s condition are remarkable for someone who has endured sleep deprivation and brutal interrogation by China’s Ministry of State Security.

She is learning Spanish, reading Australian literature and ­trying to keep positive – or as positive as you can be in a Chinese prison cell more than 9000km away from your two children.

In her meetings with Australian consular officials, she has been able to pass on messages to family, friends and supporters.

She became visibly emot­ional at one, when she was told about the support for her back in Australia.

“It means so much that I’m not alone and that I’m remembered and thought about,” Cheng said.

“The appreciation I feel is too big to put into words.”