Chinese-born Australian journalist Cheng Lei attends a signing ceremony by Premier Li Qiang and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on June 17, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Australia voiced concern on June 18 about the “ham-fisted” actions of two Chinese diplomats at a media event, tarnishing a highly touted visit in which Premier Li Qiang has sought to celebrate trade and friendship.

China’s second-most powerful man has posed in front of giant pandas, warmly toasted Australian wine, and highlighted the need to peacefully work through “differences” during his rare trip to Australia.

But the carefully choreographed tour briefly unravelled during a signing ceremony inside Australia’s parliament on Monday, when two Chinese diplomats appeared to shadow high-profile Australian journalist Cheng Lei.

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Ms. Cheng returned to Australia in October last year after three years detained in China on opaque spying charges and has spoken unflinchingly of her bleak prison conditions.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese criticised the “ham-fisted” behaviour, saying Australia had “followed up with the Chinese embassy to express our concern”.

“When you look at the footage, it was a pretty clumsy attempt, frankly, by a couple of people to stand in between where the cameras were and where Cheng Lei was sitting,” he told national broadcaster ABC.

“And Australian officials intervened, as they should have, to ask the Chinese officials who were there at the press conference to move.”

Footage showed two Chinese diplomats hovering next to a seated Ms. Cheng, repeatedly ignoring requests to move from animated Australian officials.

Ms. Cheng said they “went to great lengths to block me from the cameras”.

“And I’m guessing that’s to prevent me from saying something or doing something that they think would be a bad look,” she told Sky News Australia.

“But that itself is a bad look.”

Mr. Albanese had told Mr. Li in closed-door talks just hours earlier that “foreign interference wasn’t acceptable in Australia’s political system”.

Lingering ‘differences’

The highest-ranking Chinese official to visit Australia since 2017, Mr. Li’s visit shows the growing rapprochement between Beijing and Canberra after a years-long trade dispute.

“Of course, we all know that in the past few years, our bilateral relations also encountered some difficulties and twists and turns,” Mr. Li said before departing Australia on Tuesday afternoon.

“But thanks to the joint efforts of both sides, the bilateral relations have been put back on the right track.”

Asked about the Cheng Lei incident and Mr. Albanese’s remarks on Tuesday, Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesman said he was “not aware of the specific situation you mentioned”.

“But I can tell you that as far as I know, the ninth China-Australia Annual Prime Ministers’ Meeting and other activities have been held smoothly and achieved positive results,” Lin Jian told a regular news briefing.

Premier Li ended his visit with a tour of a Chinese-controlled lithium refiner in Western Australia, a sign of his country’s vast appetite for Australia’s critical minerals.

Australia extracts 52% of the world’s lithium, the vast majority of it exported as ore to China for refining and use in batteries.

It is a crucial ingredient in China’s world-dominant electric vehicle industry.

China’s involvement in the country’s critical mineral industry is sensitive because of its dominance of global supply chains.

Despite the goodwill on show, both sides have acknowledged lingering “differences” — a nod to diplomatic jostling in the Pacific.

“We won’t always agree, and the points in which we disagree won’t simply disappear if we leave them in silence,” Mr. Albanese said.

Australia accused China last month of “unsafe and unprofessional” conduct after one of its warplanes allegedly fired flares in the path of a naval helicopter over the Yellow Sea.

It also said late last year a Chinese destroyer blasted Australian navy divers with dangerous sonar pulses.

China’s Premier Li Qiang inspects a hydrogen refuelling truck as Executive Chairman of Fortescue Andrew Forrest (C) looks on at the Fortescue Hazelmere research and development facility in Hazelmere, a suburb of Perth on June 18, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Chinese Premier Li Qiang has ended his Australian tour on June 18 in the west coast city of Perth where he has focused on China’s investment in critical minerals, clean energy and business links.

Perth is the capital of Western Australia State, which provided 39% of the world’s iron ore last year. Iron ore is one of Australia’s most lucrative exports. Analysts say the commodity was spared the type of trade bans that Beijing imposed on other Australian exports as bilateral relations soured three years ago because the steel-making ingredient was crucial to Chinese industrial growth.

Last week, Mr. Li became the first Chinese premier to visit New Zealand then Australia in seven years. He left Perth late on June 18 for Malaysia, where he’ll be China’s first premier to visit since 2015.

While in Perth, China’s second-most powerful leader after President Xi Jinping inspected iron ore miner Fortescue’s clean energy research facility.

Fortescue’s chairman Andrew Forrest said Mr.Li was interested in the company’s plans to produce iron ore without carbon emissions and potentially “green iron.” “I think China chose us because it’s not just the best technology to go green in Australia, it’s the best technology to go green in the world and we’ve got real examples of it in trains, ship engines, trucks,” Forrest told The Associated Press before the visit.

The Perth facility is testing technology on hydrogen, ammonia and batter power for trains, ships, trucks and heavy mining equipment.

Focuses on Critical Minerals

Mr. Li also visited Chinese-controlled Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia’s processing plant south of Perth to underscore China’s interest in investing in critical minerals. The plant produces battery-grade lithium hydroxide for electric vehicles.

Australia shares U.S. concerns over China’s global dominance in critical minerals and control over supply chains in the renewable energy sector.

Citing Australia’s national interests, Treasurer Jim Chalmers recently ordered five Chinese-linked companies to divest their shares in the rare earth mining company Northern Minerals.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote in an opinion piece published in Perth’s main newspaper, The West Australian, on June 18, that his government was acting to ensure foreign investment “continues to serve our national interests.”

“This includes reforming the foreign investment framework so that it’s more efficient, more transparent and more effective at managing risk,” Mr. Albanese wrote.

Mr. Forrest said the national risk from Chinese investment in the critical minerals sector was overstated.

“Australia should be producing all the critical minerals in the world because we’re a great mining country, so by all means let’s go in harder after critical minerals, but let’s not do it with panic because there is no reason for panic,” Mr. Forrest said.

Mr. Qiang and Mr. Albanese flew to Perth in separate planes late on June 17 from the national capital Canberra where the two leaders held an official annual meeting with senior ministers in Parliament House.

Both leaders attended a round table of business leaders in Perth representing resource companies including mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said business dialogue was essential to the bilateral relations between the two free trading partners.

“While there have been challenging times in the bilateral relationship between the two nations, I think it’s fair to say this is another positive point of progress,” Black told the meeting.

“It shows that whilst the parameters of a bilateral relationship are set by governments, they will always be sustained by the quality of the personal relationships and especially those personal relationships that subsist on a business-to-business level,” Black added.

Chinese premiers and Australian prime ministers met annually from 2013 until 2019, after which Beijing banned minister-to-minister contacts over the previous conservative government’s call for an independent investigation into the causes of and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Relations had already been strained by Australian legislation that banned covert foreign interference in Australian politics and the exclusion of Chinese-owned telecommunications giant Huawei from rolling out the national 5G network due to securit

Beijing initiated a reset in relations after Mr.Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor Party was elected in 2022.

The annual meetings resumed when Mr. Albanese visited Beijing in November last year.

Concerns over press freedom

Mr. Albanese revealed that his office had complained to the Chinese Embassy about the behavior of two officials during a media event with the two leaders after June 17th meeting.

Australia had “concerns” about two Chinese officials who stood in the way of cameras taking images of well-known Australian journalist Cheng Lei sitting with other reporters as the leaders spoke, Mr. Albanese said.

Mrs. Cheng spent more than three years in detention in China for breaking an embargo with a broadcast on a state-run TV network while she was based in Beijing. She was released last year after interventions by the Australian government and now works for Sky News Australia.

“When you look at the footage, it was a pretty clumsy attempt, frankly, by a couple of people to stand in between where the cameras were and where Mrs. Cheng Lei was sitting,” Mr. Albanese said.

“There should be no impediments to Australian journalists going about their job and we’ve made that clear to the Chinese Embassy,” Mr. Albanese added.

Chinese-born Cheng told Sky News on June 17 that the officials “went to great lengths to block me from the cameras and to flank me.” “I’m only guessing that it’s to prevent me from saying something or doing something that they think would be a bad look. But that in itself was a bad look,” Mrs. Cheng said.

The embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Li and Mr. Albanese made statements during the press event but neither took questions from the assembled journalists.

Australian journalist Cheng Lei smiles after she arrives at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne on Wednesday October 11, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

Australian journalist Cheng Lei says she spent more than three years in detention in China for breaking an embargo with a television broadcast on a state-run TV network.

Ms. Cheng‘s first television interview since she was freed was broadcast in Australia on Tuesday almost a week after she returned to her mother and two children, aged 11 and 14, in the city of Melbourne.

The Chinese-born 48-year-old was an English-language anchor for state-run China Global Television Network in Beijing when she was detained in August 2020.

She said her offense was breaking a government-imposed embargo by a few minutes following a briefing by officials.

Her treatment in custody was designed to “drive home that point that in China that is a big sin,” Ms. Cheng told Sky News Australia. “That you have hurt the motherland and that the state’s authority has been eroded because of you.”

“What seems innocuous to us here is — I’m sure it’s not limited to embargoes, but many other things — are not in China, especially (because) I’m given to understand that the gambit of state security is widening,” she said.

Ms. Cheng did not give details about the embargo breach.

Her account differs from the crime outlined by China’s Ministry of State Security last week.

The Ministry said Ms. Cheng was approached by a foreign organisation in May 2020 and provided them with state secrets she had obtained on the job in violation of a confidentiality clause signed with her employer. A police statement did not name the organisation or say what the secrets were.

A Beijing court convicted her of illegally providing state secrets abroad and she was sentenced to two years and 11 months, the statement said. She was deported after the sentencing because of the time she had already spent in detention.

Observers suspect the real reason Ms. Cheng was released was persistent lobbying from the Australian government and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s planned trip to China this year on a date yet to be set.

Ms. Cheng said that a visit to a toilet at the court on the morning before she was sentenced was the first time in more than three years that she had sat on a toilet or seen her reflection in a mirror.

Her commercial airline flight from Beijing to Melbourne was the first time she had slept in darkness in three years because the lights were always left on at night in the detention facilities.

Ms. Cheng migrated to Australia with her parents at age 10. She said she struggles to answer when asked how she has been since her return.

“Sometimes I fell like an invalid, like a newborn and very fragile,” Ms. Cheng said. “And other times I feel like I could fly and I want to embrace everything and I enjoy everything so intensely and savor it.”