Cheng Lei, the Australian journalist deported from China in October 2023 after three years as a political prisoner, is rebuilding her life through a memoir, a play about her incarceration, stand-up comedy, and a return to journalism. Her story offers a rare insight into China's secretive prison system and a personal narrative of resilience.
Speaking during rehearsals for her play, 1154 Days, Cheng said: 'When your life gets shattered and you lose so many things that used to define you, you do have a kind of freedom to reorganize your atoms and create a new you.' She added that she now has 'a fuller appreciation of life and much more adventurousness and also a serene sort of quiet fearlessness.'
Cheng, who migrated from China to Australia at age 10, had a 20-year career in bilingual journalism across Asia. In August 2020, while working as an anchor for CCTV's 'Global Business' show, she was informed she was under investigation for supplying state secrets to foreign organisations, blindfolded, and taken to a secret location. A Beijing court convicted her in October 2023 of illegally providing state secrets abroad, sentencing her to two years and 11 months—time she had almost entirely served.
Her alleged crime involved breaking an embargo by seven minutes on then-Premier Li Keqiang's annual report in May 2020, which unusually revealed no economic growth target due to the pandemic. Cheng stated in her memoir she was unaware of the embargo. She believes she was a victim of 'hostage diplomacy,' punished as an Australian citizen after her government called for an investigation into COVID-19's origins. Australia's then-Foreign Minister Marise Payne made that call on 19 April 2020, and China's Ministry of State Security began investigating Cheng just four days later.
Australian officials consistently raised Cheng's detention in high-level meetings and continue to press for the release of another Australian, Yang Hengjun, a democracy blogger given a suspended death sentence in 2024 for espionage. Cheng feels a profound responsibility to speak out for those like Yang, who have fallen victim to the Chinese justice system. She described the first six months of her incarceration under Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location as the worst period, marked by isolation, constant surveillance, and enforced silence.
