The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has revealed she promised the children of the formerly jailed journalist Cheng Lei to “do everything I could to bring her home”.
Speaking a day after Cheng returned to Melbourne after three years in detention in China accused of ill-defined security-related allegations, Wong said the Australian journalist was “in extraordinarily good spirits” and was “pretty tough”.
“I think I was more emotional than she was,” Wong said on Thursday, as she described greeting Cheng at Melbourne airport the day before.
“It was really moving to meet Cheng Lei yesterday and to speak to her kids, who are not much older than mine. I made them a promise some time ago we would do everything, I would do everything I could, to bring her home, and it was wonderful to see them together.”
Wong said she hoped Cheng – a former business anchor for the state-owned China Global Television Network (CGTN) – was now “having some downtime with her family”. Cheng’s children are 12 and 14.
The breakthrough came after the Australian government repeatedly raised the case with the Chinese government. That included in all ministerial meetings and also when Anthony Albanese met the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, last year and the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, last month.
Wong said she first raised Cheng’s case in her first meeting with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, shortly after the 2022 election, and “made clear at that time that Australians wanted to see a mother reunited with her children”.
She said that advocacy had been “backed in by officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade” including the secretary, Jan Adams, and the Australian ambassador to China, Graham Fletcher, who accompanied Cheng on an Air China flight from Beijing on Wednesday.
“I wish her and her family well,” Wong said. “She asked what she could do for us and I said, ‘you can thrive – thrive and be healthy and happy – and that’s what all Australians want you to be’.”
Cheng posted a short message online on Wednesday evening: “Tight hugs, teary screams, holding my kids in the spring sunshine. Trees shimmy from the breeze. I can see the entirety of the sky now! Thank you Aussies.”
China’s national security body released a statement saying Cheng had been deported “in accordance with the law after serving her sentence” of two years and 11 months in prison.
“In May 2020, Cheng Lei was coaxed by personnel from an overseas agency, violated the confidentiality clause signed with the employing unit, and illegally provided the state secrets she mastered at work to the overseas agency through her mobile phone,” it said.
Cheng’s supporters have long maintained she is innocent, and Canberra had said the case lacked transparency and judicial fairness. Her trial was held in secret and no evidence against her has been publicly released or examined. China’s opaque judicial system has a conviction rate of more than 99.8%, and there is almost no transparency in national security cases.
Wong was reluctant to detail the negotiations that allowed Cheng to be released, but said the government appreciated “the arrangements which were made to bring her home”.
Peter Greste, the Australian journalist who was jailed in Egypt for 400 days until his release in 2015, said he was “more than elated” to hear that Cheng’s ordeal was “finally over”.
“As a former detainee myself, I well understand what she’s been through,” said Greste, now the executive director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.
Greste said Cheng’s case “was always shrouded in secrecy and the Chinese government never presented any clear evidence of wrongdoing”.
He said Cheng had shown “incredible courage, resilience and dignity – all qualities that I’m sure helped win her support around the world, and ultimately her freedom”.
The minister for home affairs, Clare O’Neil, told ABC TV: “I mean it’s been a week of complete darkness on the international news front, and this is just a moment of sunshine for all Australians.”
The deputy opposition leader, Sussan Ley, gave plaudits to the Australian government for securing the release.
“Well done to the government and [it’s] so lovely to see Cheng Lei come home,” Ley told Nine’s Today program.
“We still remember that letter from her cell, only seeing a small amount of sunlight and she called it a love letter to 25 million Australians.
“So great work by our diplomats working so carefully behind the scenes as well.”
Ley urged the Chinese government to release others in detention, including the Australian writer Yang Hengjun, whose case the Albanese government has promised to continue to raise with Beijing.
The independent MP Sophie Scamps said Cheng’s release was “a big win”.
“I met her partner, Nick Coyle, earlier on in the year, just by chance, and it was such a deeply distressing time for that family and for Cheng to be separated from her children for three years,” Scamps told the Today program.
Elaine Pearson, the Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the case showed that “political cases need political pressure to be resolved”.
“Cheng Lei’s release is wonderful news for her and her family; she should never have spent one minute in prison let alone more than three years,” she said.
“Foreign governments like Australia should keep up the pressure and use every opportunity to press strongly for the release of all those arbitrarily detained in China.”
