Penny Wong urges prisoner release ahead of China talks

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has called for detained Australians Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun to be freed, saying their release by ‘would be beneficial’ for the Australia-China relationship.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong will meet with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to celebrate 50 years of Australia-China political relations. Picture: AAP

Ahead of her meeting with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has called for detained Australians Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun to be freed, saying their release by “would be beneficial” for the Australia-China relationship.

Senator Wong, who departed for Beijing on Tuesday, said she would raise the Australians’ fate with Mr Wang, as well as China’s trade sanctions against Australian exporters.

Standing alongside Anthony Albanese before boarding her RAAF flight to Beijing, Senator Wong said her only expectations of the visit were that “we have a meeting and there is dialogue”.

She said the Albanese government had been working “patiently and methodically” to improve ties with Australia’s biggest trading partner, and emphasised the importance of dialogue to resolving the “difficult issues” between the two countries.

Senator Wong declined to speculate on the likely outcomes of the trip, saying she was “not interested in giving any country leverage other than Australia”.

“Many of the hard issues in the relationship will take time to resolve in our interests,” she said.

But in a clear signal to Beijing of Australia’s expectations, she said the release of Ms Cheng and Dr Yang would help turn around the strained relationship between the two countries.

“I think that it would be beneficial, not just for the individuals, which is, I think, important in its own right, but it would be beneficial to the relationship for those consular matters to be dealt with,” Senator Wong said.

The Foreign Minister was due to arrive in Beijing in the early hours of Wednesday and will meet Mr Wang about 1pm AEDT on Wednesday.

The meeting, on the 50th anniversary of Australia’s diplomatic relationship with China, comes amid a thaw in bilateral relations following the Prime Minister’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali last month.

Senator Wong’s visit is considered a likely precursor to a prime ministerial trip to Beijing.

But the Chinese Community Party mouthpiece the Global Times warned that the difficulties between China and Australia “have not been completely eliminated”, and Australia must “show verbal goodwill and substantial actions” to improve the bilateral relationship.

“This includes taking a rational view of China’s peaceful development, stopping a politicised investigation into China’s investment in Australia, and ceasing arbitrarily securitising political relations and even forming confrontational and exclusive coteries in the region against China,” it said.

The newspaper said it hoped Australia and China would “meet each other halfway and push their relations back on track”.

The Global Times said the “radical, narrow, erroneous, and stupid China policies of the last two Australian administrations” had damaged Australia-China ­relations, and should serve as a lesson for other nations.

“The twists and turns and difficulties that China-Australia relations have experienced in the past years are completely unnecessary and purely manufactured,” the paper said.

“If someone still jumps into such a pit and repeats the same mistakes, it will be either stupid or evil,” it added.

Supporters of Ms Cheng and Dr Yang are cautiously optimistic the visit could be a step towards their release, but believe any breakthrough is still some time off.

Ms Cheng, a Chinese-born Australian journalist, has been detained since August 2020, while Dr Yang, a writer and academic, has been held since January 2019.

Both are accused of espionage offences.

Ms Cheng’s partner, Nick Coyle, said: “This is the third Christmas that the kids haven‘t seen their mum, and we’d certainly urge the Chinese system to find a compassionate and speedy resolution.”

Dr Yang’s friend, UTS associate professor Feng Chongyi, said he believed there was an opportunity to secure the Australians’ release if the government made them “the top priority, rather than business”.

“I hope they will put the release of Yang Hengjun and Cheng Lei as item number one,” Dr Feng said.