Australian journalist arrested in China on spying charge
Chinese investigators have formally arrested an Australian journalist who worked for China’s state television on suspicion of sharing national secrets, the Australian foreign minister said Monday, a move likely to increase tensions between the two countries.
The journalist, Cheng Lei, worked as an anchor for a business show on China Global Television News, or CGTN, when she was detained in August. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs later disclosed that Cheng had been accused of a national security crime but gave no further details.
“Chinese authorities have advised that Cheng was arrested on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas,” the Australian foreign minister, Marise Payne, said in a brief statement Monday. She gave no other details.
“We expect basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met, in accordance with international norms,” Payne added.
Cheng, 45, was born in Hunan province in southern China and migrated to Australia with her parents while still a child. Her arrest on such a politically charged accusation comes while the two countries have been at loggerheads in a series of disputes that have driven relations to their lowest point in decades.
“I don’t think it is about the bilateral relationship, though that doesn’t help her cause,” Geoff Raby, a former Australian ambassador to Beijing who has written about the deterioration of relations, said of Cheng’s arrest. China’s definition of state secrets was very broad, he said, adding, “Acquittals are infrequent in such cases.”
China’s criminal code says that providing state secrets overseas should bring a prison sentence of five to 10 years, or longer in serious cases.
Australia’s ability to secure Cheng’s release through diplomacy appears dauntingly limited.
In recent years, Canberra has sought to deter Beijing from influence-building activities on Australian soil, including among the country’s large population of recent migrants from China.