MELBOURNE, Australia — Following her release from a three-year imprisonment in Beijing, Cheng Lei has dedicated herself to reconstructing her existence. The journalist has authored a book and theatrical work, experimented with comedic performance, and resumed her media profession.
Her experience has provided unusual insight into the brutal realities of China’s secretive detention facilities. Additionally, she has offered a deeply personal account of perseverance, demonstrating how purpose can emerge from adversity.
“I think 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,” Cheng told The Associated Press during rehearsals for a play about her incarceration, “1154 Days.”
“For me, it’s a fuller appreciation of life and much more adventurousness and also a serene sort of quiet fearlessness,” she added.
Theatrical work represents one of several new pursuits that have characterized the China-born Australian’s existence since her deportation from Beijing in October 2023.
After immigrating from China at age 10 with her family, she obtained Australian citizenship. She characterized herself as an unfulfilled accountant when she departed Australia at 25 seeking opportunities in media.
Cheng had risen to become a presenter for the “Global Business” program on China state broadcaster CCTV English, following two decades of developing her bilingual journalism career across Asia. This chapter concluded suddenly in August 2020, when a Beijing State Security Bureau official informed her at CCTV headquarters that she faced investigation for providing state secrets to foreign organizations. She was blindfolded and taken to an undisclosed facility.
In October 2023, a Beijing court found her guilty of illegally providing state secrets abroad and imposed a sentence of two years and 11 months in prison. By the time of sentencing, she had nearly completed that duration in custody.
Her violation consisted of breaking by seven minutes an embargo in May 2020 on the then-Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s annual report that revealed, unusually, no economic growth target would be set for China that year due to pandemic uncertainty, Cheng wrote in her memoir published last year. She said she hadn’t been aware of an embargo.
Cheng believes she was a victim of hostage diplomacy, punished as an Australian citizen because her government had demanded an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. On April 19, 2020, Australia’s then-Foreign Minister Marise Payne called for an inquiry into the pandemic. China’s Ministry of State Security began investigating Cheng four days later on “suspicion of endangering state security.”
“Why me? Why that time? All these questions I’m still asking,” Cheng said.
One month prior to Cheng’s detention, Australia cautioned its citizens they faced potential “arbitrary detention” in China. All Australian journalists employed by Australian media organizations subsequently departed. The final two, the Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith and Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s Bill Birtles, left in September 2020, following diplomatic confrontations. They were individually questioned by police regarding Cheng before receiving permission to exit China.
COVID drove an already strained relationship between Australia and China to unprecedented lows. An enraged Beijing ceased accepting calls from Australian government ministers. Formal and informal restrictions were imposed on Australian exports including wine, coal, barley and lobsters.
The conservative Australian government that provoked China’s anger was succeeded by the current center-left Labor Party government in May 2022 elections, prior to the gradual removal of trade barriers.
Australian officials had addressed Cheng’s detention during high-level bilateral discussions, just as they continue to pressure Beijing to release another Australian, Yang Hengjun.
The Chinese-born democracy blogger received a suspended death sentence in 2024, after a Beijing court convicted him of espionage.
The 60-year-old has remained in custody since arriving in China on a flight from the United States in 2019. He is expected to learn within weeks whether his penalty will be changed to life in prison.
His supporters fear he wouldn’t survive a long prison sentence due to his deteriorating health.
Cheng expressed feeling obligated to those like Yang, who have become victims of the Chinese justice system, to speak out against it.
The most difficult phase of her imprisonment occurred initially: six months under Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location, or RSDL.
Cheng explained that authorities concentrate immediately on breaking prisoners to secure guilty pleas through isolation, continuous monitoring, enforced silence and severe limitations on physical movement. Despite enduring what she termed the “stultifying monotony,” Cheng received credit for only three of her six months in RSDL toward her sentence.
“I know people who are still going through RSDL, or unfair, unjust, arbitrary detention in China. Or being sentenced to ludicrous, harsh sentences for standing up for other people, for standing up for human rights,” Cheng said.
“They would want this story to be told because they don’t have a voice. And for the people who are too scared to talk because their families are hostages in China, this is for them too,” she added.
The theatrical production debuts May 28 in Melbourne, where Cheng, 50, currently resides with her daughter Ava, 17, and son Alex, 15. Both children had been visiting family in Melbourne when China closed its borders due to the pandemic in early 2020, months before Cheng’s arrest.
The play’s publicist says the work reveals how the mind adapts, resists and even creates under pressure.
“In isolation, she built television programs in her head, devised memory games and found unexpected ways to connect with herself, others and even with her captors,” a press release says.
Cheng describes it more directly: her work focuses on emotions.
“It’s about how it feels to have everything taken away from you. How it feels to be with three other people all the time in the same little cell for three years, how it feels to be watched every minute of the day and how it feels to finally regain your freedom.”
Cheng hopes audiences will see past China’s assertions of being a just and orderly society that follows the rule of law, as Beijing positions itself as a more dependable international partner than the United States under President Donald Trump.
Stand-up comedy represents another new venture in Cheng’s post-imprisonment life. She initially performed on a Melbourne stage in June 2024 — eight months following her release — alongside China-born Australian activist and writer Vicky Xu.
“If you can’t joke about incarceration, then you have no sense of humor,” Cheng told the Australian Financial Review at the time. “Humor got me through much of it and brightened the cell for me and my cellmates.”
Cheng delivered a five-minute performance at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s RAW Competition for newcomers in February and eagerly anticipates additional opportunities. She joked with her audience that she’d need a longer slot to cover her story of imprisonment in China for so-called espionage.
“Life is a tragic comedy and we should mine it,” Cheng quipped. “I just have a bit more material than others.”
