Australia urges China to treat detained dual citizen fairly
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia on Thursday urged China to treat a Chinese-Australian writer fairly and transparently almost a week after he was detained in what a friend suspects is part of a backlash against Canada’s arrest of a top Chinese telecommunications executive.
Spy novelist and online commentator Yang Hengjun was a Chinese diplomat before he became an Australian citizen. Friends say the 53-year-old had been living in New York as a visiting scholar at Columbia University and had returned to China last week with his wife, Yuan Rui Juan, and 14-year-old stepdaughter.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Chinese authorities notified the Australian Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday night that they had detained Yang.
“We will continue to make representations to China to ensure that this matter is dealt with transparently and fairly,” Payne said in a statement.