China has released Australian journalist Qing Li, after more than three years in prison, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Wednesday, confirming that she is now in Melbourne, where she is reunited with her two children.

Albanese said, "Australians want to see Qing Li with her two children," adding that the journalist is "delighted" to return to her country.

Cheng (48 years old), a former broadcaster on Chinese state television CGTN, was suspended in August 2020.

“On October 11, 2023, Qing Lei, an Australian citizen, was deported by the Beijing Municipal State Security Bureau after serving her sentence,” China’s Ministry of State Security said in a statement published after Albanese’s announcement.

She was officially charged with "disclosing state secrets abroad" without providing further details, in February 2021.

She was tried in closed sessions, and the Australian ambassador to China was prevented from entering the court and following up on the judicial proceedings.

Albanese explained that her release came after “the completion of legal procedures in China,” noting that her release would facilitate his visit to China at some point this year.

Qing Li, born in China, immigrated to Australia as a child before later returning to China, which does not allow its citizens to hold the citizenship of another country.

Cheng, a well-known face on CGTN, interviewed company executives from all over the world.

She had previously worked for nine years in China, for the American channel CNBC.

Hostage diplomacy

Before her detention, the journalist had posted a number of messages on Facebook criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese authorities’ management of the coronavirus crisis.

“The big story today is the visit of our dear leader, which sparked muffled laughter in the editorial office,” she wrote in March 2020 during the Chinese president’s first visit to the city of Wuhan, where the virus was said to have originated. She added, “It seems that waving to a large screen showing a hospital in Wuhan equivalent to a visit.

Cheng described her prison conditions in a letter to Australian officials that was made public in August.

“I miss the sun,” she said. “In my cell, the sun shines through the window, but I can only spend ten hours a year” under its rays.

The detention of the journalist represented a new stage in the deterioration of relations between China and Australia, which Beijing considers a pawn in the hands of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region.

Relations between the two countries were particularly tense when Canberra called for an international investigation into the origin of the coronavirus that was discovered in China at the end of 2019.

In response, China imposed a series of sanctions on Australian products, measures that were lifted as relations improved.

China has detained foreign citizens several times during times of intense political tension with their countries of origin, leading to accusations of hostage diplomacy.

Cheng's case is being compared to that of Yang Jun, an Australian academic and writer born in China, who has been detained there since 2019 on vague espionage charges. He was tried in closed sessions in mid-2021, under the pretext that the trial was related to “state secrets,” and he is still awaiting the ruling.

Qing Li's detention led to the hasty departure of two Australian journalists from China, for fear of arrest.

Bill Birtles, a correspondent for the Australian ABC television channel in Beijing at the time, and Michael Smith, a former correspondent in Shanghai for the Australian Financial Review, took refuge in diplomatic headquarters for several days before leaving China, accompanied by diplomats from their countries.