Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who has been detained in China for more than three years, has been released, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Wednesday, adding that she was now back in Melbourne.
“The Australian people desperately wanted Cheng Lei to be reunited with her young children,” Mr Albanese said, adding that the journalist was “delighted” to have returned home.
Ms. Cheng, 48, a former anchor for Chinese public broadcaster CGTN, had been detained since August 2020.
Ms Cheng, who was formally accused of “passing state secrets abroad”, was tried behind closed doors in 2022, with even the Australian ambassador to China barred from the court for observing the proceedings.
Mr Albanese said she was released by Beijing following the “completion of the legal process in China”.
Cheng Lei, born in China, emigrated to Australia as a child before returning to her birth country.
As a well-known face of the CGTN channel, Ms. Cheng conducted interviews with business leaders from around the world.
Cheng Lei previously worked in China for the American broadcaster CNBC for nine years.
Before her arrest, the journalist had published several posts on Facebook in which she criticized Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese authorities’ handling of the coronavirus crisis.
The journalist’s detention marked a new stage in the deterioration of relations between China and Australia, which Beijing sees as a pawn of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region.
Relations were particularly strained when Canberra called for an international investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, which was first discovered in China in late 2019.