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Cheng Lei

Cheng Lei

Cheng Lei is a Chinese-born Australian TV journalist and mother of two. She spent three years and two months in detention in China on bogus espionage charges. She was released and returned to Australia in October 2023.

Dan Andrews shakes hands with Xi Jinping.

Where will Dan Andrews be when the Chinese tanks roll?

The former Victorian premier is not the only ex-politician monetising connections made during office – just the most blatant one.

  • Cheng Lei

Latest

“The scars are still there”: the Australian journalist who was imprisoned in China for more than three years, Cheng Lei.

China’s money makes us rich but, as I well know, you can’t put a price on freedom

Falsely accused of espionage, I was jailed for more than three years in China. It is incumbent on everyone, not just Anthony Albanese, to be clear-eyed and cool-headed when it comes to Beijing.

  • Cheng Lei
Journalist Cheng Lei (centre, aged 9) with dad Chu-yong and mum Hua in Hunan province, China, 1984, right before Chu-yong came to Australia as a visiting scholar.

I love my mum, but I try to be the mother she wasn’t

I did not recognise my mum from the maternal stereotypes I saw in laundry detergent and chicken dinner commercials.

  • Cheng Lei