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Australian journalist Cheng Lei gives first interview since China detention, feels ‘very fragile’
- Australian journalist Cheng Lei was freed last week after she was detained in Beijing in August 2020 for allegedly sharing state secrets with another country
- Cheng couldn’t talk about her case, but replied ‘yes’ when asked if she shared a government document before going on-air and broke an embargo by a few minutes
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Australian journalist Cheng Lei, freed last week after three years detained in Beijing, said in her first interview with news channel Sky News Australia that she alternated between feeling “very fragile” like a newborn and feeling like she could fly.
Cheng returned home last Wednesday and was reunited with her children aged 12 and 14 in Melbourne, after being released from a Chinese jail. She was met by Foreign Minister Penny Wong at Melbourne’s airport and welcomed back to Australia in a telephone call from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who had raised her case with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Sometimes I feel like an invalid, like a newborn and very fragile and other times I feel like I could fly,” she said in the interview with the broadcaster on Tuesday.
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Australian journalist Cheng Lei in first interview since release from China detention
Australian journalist Cheng Lei in first interview since release from China detention
Cheng wept as she recalled her two children running towards her at the airport last Wednesday and her heartbreak at seeing her mother had aged and lost weight after shouldering the burden of raising them in her absence for three years.
“We just all screamed,” she said.
Cheng, 48, was a business television anchor for Chinese state television when she was detained in August 2020 for allegedly sharing state secrets with another country. She went on trial in a closed Beijing court in 2022, with details of her sentence not released until last week.
Australia had repeatedly raised concerns about her detention, which came as China widened blocks on Australian exports amid a diplomatic dispute that is gradually easing.
In China that is a big sin, you have hurt the motherland and the state’s authority has been eroded because of you. What seems innocuous to us here … are not in China
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