You can listen to the fronts on your smart sneaker every morning to hear the latest episode, just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the front. I'm Kristin Amiot. It's Wednesday, July tenth. State sponsored Chinese hackers waged a year's long campaign against
Australian networks, but it doesn't stop there. The Australian Signals Directorate also said the group targeted government systems all over the South Pacific under the direction of China's Ministry of State Security. It comes just weeks after Premier Lee Chung claimed Australia China relations are back on track, but it's not clear if the cyber espionage came up in his conversations with Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi. Richard Miles is sending three D printers to Ukraine as part of a fresh
military package. That new pledge will happen at the NATO summit this week, and it's expected to include three D printing technology, which can quickly produce parts for vehicles and weapons. The Defense Minister will also meet with Ukrainian President Volodimi Zelenski and other world leaders. On the sidelines of the summit in Washington, DC, A storm is brewing in the
United States Democratic Party. The Australian's Washington correspondent Adam Crichton writes that senior party members are resisting attempts by President Joe Biden to pull them into line as speculation swirls about his health and cognitive state. The tussle follows an extraordinary call for Biden to seriously consider his future by the Democrats longest serving senator and third in line for the presidency. Those stories alive right now at The Australian
dot com dot au. She's the self described ex Cohn caught up in an extraordinary diplomatic tit for tat. In today's episode the Broadcast, journalist Chung Lii, detained by China for more than three years, reflects on what it means to be free in an essay written as part of The Australian's sixtieth anniversary celebrations.
When you're locked up, you become obsessed with freedom. I thought about freedom for one thousand, one hundred and eighty four days.
That's journalist Chung Lii. She's reading an excerpt from an essay She's written about freedom for The Australian.
Because freedom is like health, Losing it is more acutely felt than having it.
Changli was born in China but came to live in Australia at the age of ten with her family. Lee finished her education in Queensland and then worked for a time as an accountant and then a business analy but Lee says she always wanted to be a journalist. In the early two thousands, she moved to China, where she pursued a media career. Lee thrived on television and by twenty twenty she was a well known face on the English language Chinese state owned broadcaster CGTN, as well as
covering finance news. She even had a cooking show. But then in August of twenty twenty, Lee suddenly disappeared from television screens. Her friends and family completely lost contact with her. Little did they know at the time, Lee had been arrested on murky espionage charges and put intottention it would be six months before she would see the sky again.
And they say that they gave me fifteen minutes of fresh air, but all it meant was there's a window up the top that the guard would open for fifteen minutes, but the curtains are still drawn while the windows are open, and I certainly.
Didn't feel that it was fresh air.
And you never saw anything except the blue curtains and the modeled carpet and the beij padded walls.
So what was Chugli's crime? According to the Chinese government, Lee had broken a new z embargo by a few minutes. For this, she would be imprisoned for three years, away from her two children and her partner. Chuglei's arrest came right as Australia's relationship with China went seriously south. Scott Morrison was Prime Minister at the time when the COVID nineteen pandemic was raging, and suggested more than once that China had some explaining to do about the origins of
the virus. Things have slowly improved since Labour One government in May of twenty twenty two, and Miss Chung was finally freed in October last year, following an intense diplomatic campaign by Foreign Minister Penny Wong and others. She stepped off the plane, Lee was greeted at the airport by the people she'd missed the most.
It's my kids running at me and my mom, who has aged in the past three years, and we just all screamed and.
More mom like wept and I just held onto it.
That diplomatic work is ongoing. The pressure is still on China to release detained writer Yang Han Juan, who's been detained on questionable espionage charges since twenty nineteen. He was sentenced to death for spying in February, but didn't pursue an appeal due to his declining health and a lack of faith in the Chinese justice system to give him a fair go.
Back.
In Australia, Chungli's relationship with freedom is complex. On the one hand, she writes, she appreciates and values it more than ever, but on the other she's painfully aware of how it's squad.
If we don't speak up in defense of personal freedom within Australia and outside it borders, one day will be so comfortable in our virtual cells we won't even feel it. We'll forget what freedom feels like. There will be no self as you are for now. She's taking it one day at a time.
Sometimes I feel like an invalid, like a newborn and very fragile and other times I feel like I could fly, and I want to embrace everything, and I enjoy everything so intensely and savor it.
Coming up why it's not all business as usual for chung Lei. Subscribers to The Australian get first access to six decades of thought provoking commentary and detailed analysis. Check us out at the Australian dot com dot au and we'll be back after this break.
Even before August thirteenth, twenty twenty, the day I was locked up, like many others who work and live in China, or even those who deal with China, I had already surrendered many freedoms. We gave up the freedom to criticize the government or its leaders. We gave up the freedom to protest, because we all held vested interests, our jobs, our assets, our trade.
When Chungli returned to Australia in late twenty twenty three, she returned to work as a broadcast journalist. She's a colleague of ours at Sky News Australia. In her essay for The Australian published today, she marvels at the relative freedom of the media on her home soil.
We accepted that the locals had even less freedom, that human rights lawyers were locked up and their families intimidated by the secret police. That there was heavy media censorship about what to report, what not to report, and how to report. That in Chinese art and literature, the noose of state control got tighter every year.
Last month, that contrast was thrown into sharp relief. Miss Chug, a self described ex Cohn, attended a press event at Parliament House in Canberra where Prime Minister Anthony Alberniesi and Chinese Premier Li Chang signed memoranda of understanding about a handful of issues, including education and trade. There are five documents to be signed today.
The document will be signed.
Why, Mister Leo susche the premier's visit was a significant step in the thawing of Australia's bilateral relations with China. From where Chungli was sitting, it was a very different story. Officials from the Chinese delegation crowded around Miss Chung in full view of the TV cameras dotted around the room. They couldn't be moved through the polite insistence of officials from the Prime Minister's office in standing Reille last room.
There's that unshakable Chinese compliance. Likewise, she points to the Defending Australia Summit held in Canberra in May, where an interpreter who'd been booked to translate comments by a former Chinese spy pulled the pin at the last minute.
Got two points I want to make at the top. One is an ex con an X spy, two diplomats on a stage talking freely without fear. That's what we're defending. Another point, we engaged an interpreter for Eric and she resigned on the spot. So she was afraid that he would say something against China that she would have to pass through her lips and that would hurt her. And this is on Australian soil. That's how deep the fear is. That's what we're defending against.
Chug Le says, these situations are China's priorities wit large, domestic optics first, international criticism second, And she asks, are those who leave, whether through complex diplomatic negotiations or their own free, will, ever truly free. You can read chug Le's full essay on freedom right now at the Australian dot com dot au