Despite their economic interdependence, the two countries have been at loggerheads over regional security, Australia’s ban on the use of Chinese technology for 5G telephone networks, and Australian legislation aimed at curbing China’s efforts to influence the country’s domestic politics.
China has frozen high-level government contacts with Australia and put informal sanctions on some of the country’s goods, including wine and barley. Australia’s center-right prime minister, Scott Morrison, who faces an election within months, has accused opposition politicians of selling out to Beijing, drawing rebukes from former and current Australian intelligence officials.
In June 2020, officers from the Australian Security Intelligence Organization searched the homes of four Chinese journalists based in Australia. Two Australian journalists who were working in China left there in haste a few months later after state security officers questioned them, including about Ms. Cheng.
Ms. Cheng’s friends have doubted that she was detained because of these broader issues, though the tensions may now weaken Australia’s leverage over her fate.
As a business news host for CGTN, or China Global Television News, China’s main international broadcaster, she promoted herself as a bridge between the two countries and was uninterested in gossiping about politics, said Rowan Callick, an Australian journalist formerly based in Beijing.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/world/asia/china-cheng-lei-australia.html
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