Cheng Lei: An Attack On One Australian Is An Attack on All
The National Strategic Importance of Backing Cheng Lei and Yang Heng Jun
In January 2019 and August 2020 respectively, Australian citizens Yang Heng Jun and Cheng Lei were arrested and kept in isolation and imprisonment for extended periods without charge in China. More recently, years after initial arrest, their legal processes drag on slowly with no acceptable resolution in sight.
Cheng Lei had been working at the Chinese National Broadcaster CCTV, and Yang Heng Jun had been living in Canada and came to China to formalise his divorce with the intention of remarrying. Cheng Lei’s arrest appears to have come without warning, Yang was advised by friends not to go to China due to fears of detention.
Cheng Lei is accused of espionage. The odds of a mother with two children being approached by (presumably Australian) intelligence services, and the chances of someone with those responsibilities agreeing to do intelligence work are extraordinarily low. The idea that she would have been given access to anything that could be rationally described as intelligence information is also dubious. The timing around Australia’s fightback against China’s interference in our internal affairs makes it reasonable to assume she has done absolutely nothing wrong, and has been used as just another crude way to attack the Australian government - hostage “diplomacy” as happens in countries like Iran or Afghanistan where mature political behaviour has yet to develop.
Yang’s situation is less straightforward. He appears to have early in his career been working for the Chinese Foreign Ministry and some reports suggest he was involved in Chinese intelligence. What is more clearly known is that he left that occupation, became an Australian citizen, blogged about democracy but in recent years was living a relatively quiet and unremarkable life. He was not in China. So unless he did some espionage between getting his passport stamped on arrival and being arrested by the police, it seems they’ve chosen to arrest him to get information on CCP opponents in the Chinese diaspora, and / or as a bargaining chip with the Australian government, as with Cheng Lei.
None of the above assertions are likely to be controversial if you get your news from the English language media.
Most Chinese Australians, on the other hand, probably don’t care. If they get their news from Chinese traditional or social media, they either don’t pay attention to Cheng and Lei, or assume that they are bad people being punished appropriately.
These kidnappings serve as a message to Chinese people, in Australia, even when they are citizens of Australia. They reinforce the CCPs efforts to build walls between Chinese and non Chinese people in Australian society, corroding our unity, weakening our ability to push back against foreign interference in a unified manner.
Whereas the final screen image in “Wolf Warrior 2” is a message that China will protect Overseas Chinese from the nasty foreigners, the hostage taking shows the flip side of China’s attitude to citizenship. They demonstrate that if you are Chinese, having a foreign passport will not help you in China or outside. By holding Cheng and Yang and preventing access to normal diplomatic contact that an Australian citizen should have, over time, the public starts to accept and get used to different treatment by the Chinese authorities for Australians of Chinese ethnicity. We all move on, we forget. For Chinese and non-Chinese Australians alike, it reinforces and normalises the concept that if they are Chinese they are not anyone else’s concern, and slice by salami slice we will come to accept China’s different concept of citizenship, which is race based, global and ignores the international agreements the country has signed. Gu Min Hai was neither in China (He was in Thailand) nor was he a Chinese citizen (he was a Swedish citizen) when he was kidnapped by Chinese agents in 2015 and held without trial in China. If such things have not happened yet in Australia it is because they are not yet possible, the case of Gu shows they will have no compunction about doing it when they are ready.
Well known Australians recently signed a document calling for Cheng Lei’s release. Yang it seems, is alone, unloved, and forgotten.
No Han race based Chinese community group in Australia, not one, has made noise or representations about Cheng and Yang. No Han race politician, in any political party, has spoken out or organised support for them. They won’t. Whether Chinese community groups begin as CCP United Front groups, get co-opted, or even remain outside direct association with it, they must serve the party, and the party demands the ostracism and punishment of these two individuals. Were they to take up the cause, a Chinese politician in Australia would be cut off from CCP controlled Chinese language social and traditional media and excluded from interaction with the community organisations that allow for maintenance of a social and political profile required to get votes. Individuals who speak out would find relatives or business associates in China having a cup of tea with police, monitored in communications, or like the Tibetans and Uyghurs who have sought refuge and a new life in Australia - no possibility of communication with relatives in CCP controlled territory at all.
A modern model of national unity and social order is evolving in what we used to call the “West”. The idea of the nation not based on pre WWI nationalism and social tribalism, but an open cosmopolitan society where people are free to celebrate their culture and can simultaneously expect to accepted into the wider community is evolving as the norm. Protecting and facilitating this is more than immigration or social policy, this is a core tenet of the ideology of freedom, and a direct consequence of the protection of the individuals pursuit of happiness. It is also an essential element of comprehensive national strategy because to grow a population with immigration we must sustain social harmony. This is what closed societies cannot do, our ability to grow our national strength through population growth is one of our core strategic advantages, one that China seeks to damage.
Abandoning the traditional race based definition of the state and accepting all people of any origin and working to reconcile first nations peoples has created an environment where Australia has successfully managed an immigration rate double that of Canada or the US, which in a post-covid environment means more taxpayers, more trade, more links to the outside world, and more capacity to get things done in our region. Most countries are still locked in the mentality of dividing people along racial or cultural lines to maintain a core culture at the expense of minorities within their borders. China is one such country, but they want to extend this concept beyond their borders, and separate Chinese Australians from the wider community, here.
If we are to frustrate China’s efforts to create an apartheid society in Australia, we need to work against China’s attempts to build a United Front of Chinese loyalists who see themselves as “offshore patriots” - Chinese first with Australian travel documents. This is not achieved through angry acts or words. It is achieved by showing we value them as equal and important members of our society, even if some of them reject and work to undermine this notion. To this end we must demonstrate we believe that an attack on one Australian is an attack on all. Cheng and Yang are not expendable because of their race, and the CCP must not be permitted to create this impression.
We should build public support for Cheng and Yang, and no rapprochement with China should begin until they are freed, and freed without concessions of our sovereignty. Trade and security matter, but hostages must be freed first.