After three years as a prisoner in Beijing, Cheng Lei is busy rebuilding her life. She’s written a memoir and a play, tried her hand at stand-up comedy and is pursuing her career as a journalist.
She has shone a rare spotlight on the harsh conditions within the secretive Chinese prison system. She has also shared a personal story of resilience about how meaning can be found in suffering.
“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.
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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 […] A month before Cheng’s arrest, Australia warned its citizens they risked “arbitrary detention” in China. All Australian journalists working for Australian media soon left. The last two, the Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith and Australian Broadcasting Corp.'s Bill Birtles, left in September 2020, after diplomatic standoffs. They were separately interviewed by police about Cheng before they were allowed to leave China.
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Australian officials had raised Cheng’s detention at high-level bilateral meetings, just as they continue to pressure Beijing to release another Australian, Yang Hengjun.
The Chinese-born democracy blogger was given a suspended death sentence in 2024, after a Beijing court convicted him of espionage.
The 60-year-old has been in detention since he arrived 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.
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