Who is Cheng Lei’s partner Nick Coyle and do they have kids?

Australian journalist Cheng Lei has been spent a night with her partner and two children in Melbourne after more than three years locked up in a Chinese prison.

Ms Cheng, 48, was welcomed home by Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong on Wednesday as she returned home for the first time since her sensational arrest in late 2020.

Throughout her detention in China, Ms Cheng was barred from communicating with her two daughter and son, 14 and 11, who have been living in Melbourne with her mother.

However, she was able to send letters to her partner Nick Coyle – the head of the China-Australia Chamber of Commerce.

Mr Coyle, nicknamed by Ms Cheng as her ‘knight in shining flip-flops’, has been relentless in pushing for his partner’s release and often shared the details of her letters with supporters.

Ms Cheng (right) was unable to talk to her two children but wrote letters to her partner, Nick Coyle (left)

Throughout her detention in China, Ms Cheng was barred from communicating with her two daughter and son, 14 and 11, who have been living in Melbourne with her mother

Ms Cheng was snatched by the Chinese Ministry of State Security on August 13, 2020, and taken to a so-called ‘black jail’ – which operate outside even the control of the country’s tainted judicial system.

There, she was subject to horrific conditions and denied legal representation.

China claims Ms Cheng illegally supplied state secrets overseas, a vague allegation she always denied.

Before her arrest, Ms Cheng worked as a high-profile business news anchor for CGTN, one of China’s state-owned media outlets, and CNBC before that.

In a ‘love letter’ Ms Cheng penned in August from her Chinese single-bed cell, which she shared with several other prisoners, she described moving from China to Australia as a child.

‘Even when I was a bewildered 10-year-old in 1985, I remember arriving on a Qantas flight and experiencing sitting on a toilet for the first time,’ she wrote.

‘I received such kindness from strangers and friends.

‘…It is not the same in here, I haven’t seen a tree in three years.’

Cheng Lei (right) was freed from Chinese detention and arrived home in Melbourne on Wednesday (pictured, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong welcoming Ms Cheng)

Ms Cheng (above) was suddenly arrested by Chinese Ministry of State Security on August 13, 2020

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for Ms Cheng and her family’s privacy to be respected ‘as she adjusts to what has obviously been a very difficult and traumatic period’.

‘Her return brings an end to a very difficult few years for Ms Cheng and her family,’ he said on Wednesday.

‘This is an outcome that the Australian government has been seeking for a long time and her return will be warmly welcomed, not just by her family and friends but all Australians.’

Despite the efforts of the Australian government, Ms Cheng was kept behind bars for over three years.

By May 10 this year, which marked 1,000 days imprisonment, Ms Cheng had been subject to a closed door trial, which Australia’s Ambassador to China Graham Fletcher was barred from, but was not sentenced.

Ms Cheng (pictured in Melbourne on Wednesday) was subject to harsh condition in a Chinese ‘black jail’ – detention centres considered unlawful by several human rights organisations

In a joint statement, Ms Wong and Mr Albanese said Mr Cheng’s release ‘follows the completion of legal processes in China’.

Australia’s relationship with China deteriorated sharply in April 2020 when the  then Morrison government called for an independent inquiry into the origin of Covid-19 which began in Wuhan in 2019.

Shortly after that, Ms Cheng was snatched by secret police and detained without charge or access to legal advice, sparking allegations the arrest was an example of ‘hostage diplomacy’.

Consular reports prepared by Australian embassy officials found Ms Cheng was often pinned to uncomfortable chairs with heavy wooden boards and kept in an overcrowded cell.

Mr Coyle shared the letter Ms Cheng wrote in August, which detailed her miserable  life in Chinese detention. 

Ms Cheng (above) wrote a ‘love letter’ to Australia in August and detailed arriving in Australia from China as a child and how she used memories of her home to cope in prison

Ms Cheng only received 10 full hours of sunlight per year, used ‘daggy Aussie humour’ to keep her spirits up and secretly mouthed Australian place names to remind herself of ‘freedom’. 

‘I miss the sun. In my cell, the sunlight shines through the window but I can stand in it for only 10 hours a year,’ the message read. 

‘Every year the bedding is taken into the sun for two hours to air, when it came back last time, I wrapped myself in the doona and pretended I was being hugged by my family under the sun. 

‘I can’t believe I used to avoid the sun when I was living back in Australia, although knowing Melbourne weather, it will probably rain for the first two weeks after I return.’ 

During the first six months of imprisonment, Ms Cheng was subject to solitary confinement and forced into stress positions during interrogations, the BBC reports.

She spent the remainder of her term being held with other prisoners.

Ms Cheng said another thing she desperately missed was Aussie humour.

Ms Cheng (above) was snatched by authorities when tensions were running high between the Chinese and Australia governments over the origin of Covid

The letter began with the line: ‘G’day Aussies, excuse the daggy slang from someone in need of “ockerism”.’

‘Growing up Chinese Australian, I had two identities that would often fight for the upper hand depending on the context and the company, but in humour, the Aussie humour wins hands down every time,’ she said.

‘Even though we speak different languages and eat different meals, we laugh the same and have an eye for the absurd.’