A Chinese-Australian journalist named Cheng Lei was detained in 2019 on “murky” espionage charges and was given a closed-court trial in Beijing which resulted in her being detained for 3 years. Cheng Lei has written a story on her hardships in chinese prison since her release, one of which was that she was only allowed to stand in sunlight for 10 hours a year. The Australian government advocated heavily for the release of their citizen for 3 years until she was finally released. The release comes during a more supportive relationship change between China and Australia. This new relationship comes from Australia’s center-left labor party that was elected 9 years ago. Since the election China has lifted several official and unofficial trade barriers on Australia.
Cheng Lei’s release was very obviously heavily due to the increasingly positive relationship between Australia and China. This new relationship between the 2 countries has been extremely beneficial to Australia, Australia has had released barriers on trade as well as citizens that were unfairly detained being released back to them. I don’t see the benefit to China for this new relationship other than influence. Australia has no major exports that China is in dire need of, nor does Australia have any chinese citizens captive. It’s also very unlike China to do things out of “good will” or to make a “show of faith”. I’m very curious to follow this and see what China’s ultimate objectives are with Australia given how out of character this is for the communist state.
I think this doesn’t really affect the region or the world in general. In class we talk about how much things like this matter but this really doesn’t affect much of the world. It does allow for more trade between China and Australia but it still doesn’t benefit China nearly as much as it benefits Australia. I’m sure that China will attempt to influence Australia heavily.