Welcome to the cynical podcast, the weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with SubChina.

SubChina is the best way to keep on top of all the news out of China, especially if you subscribe to our daily email newsletter, SubChina access,

or check out SubChina.com for all the original reported stories, op-eds, great regular columns,

and our growing range of videos and podcasts. It's a feast of business, political, and cultural

news about a nation that is reshaping the world. I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you from my home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

On August 14th of last year, the CGTN anchor Chenglei and Australian citizen,

was detained in Beijing and placed in what is called residential surveillance.

Six months later, in February of this year, she was formally arrested

and charged on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas, according to the Australian

foreign minister, Marisa Payne. Her case has raised many questions, leading some to suspect that

this may be an instance of hostage diplomacy, like the well-known cases of the two

Michaels, Michael Covering and Michael Spavore, the two Canadians detained and then arrested

as a response to the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Lanjo.

The detention of Chung-Lay took place during and likely contributed to the precipitous downward

slide in relations between China and Australia.

It also prompted two Australian journalists, Bill Burtles and Michael Smith, to leave China quite abruptly in September.

Joining me today to talk about Chung-Lay's case and its broader context are three guests,

one of whom is the above-mentioned Bill Burtle's correspondent

for ABC, who was, as I've said, in Beijing until fairly recently and joins us from Australia.

Bill, welcome to Cineca.

Thanks, Kaiser, for inviting me on. I appreciate it.

Yeah, great to have you. Also joining me is Lucy Hornby, who's been on our program several

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