China has detained an Australian news anchor working for its state-run English-language television network CGTN, Australia's foreign minister said on Monday.

The detention of journalist Cheng Lei is a new blow to deteriorating relations between the two countries that have seen China warn its citizens of travelling to Australia and vice-versa.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Australia was informed on August 14 that Cheng was being held by Beijing authorities.

Australian consular officials spoke to Cheng in her detention facility via video link on August 27 and were in touch with her family, Payne said in a statement.

She provided no further details, but public broadcaster ABC said Cheng's friends became concerned after she stopped responding to messages in recent weeks.

The CGTN website page which described Cheng as an anchor on the network's Global Business programme was no longer available after news of her detention emerged.

The ABC said Cheng was being held under "residential surveillance at a designated location", a form of detention that allows investigators to hold and question a suspect for up to six months without them being formally arrested.

The broadcaster published a statement by Cheng's family in Melbourne expressing confidence that "In China, due process will be observed and we look forward to a satisfactory and timely conclusion to the matter."

"We ask that you respect that process and understand there will be no further comment at this time," the statement said.

Ties began to sour between Australia and China — its biggest trading partner — more than two years ago when Australian authorities began to move against what was seen as China's growing political interference and influence peddling in the country.

Beijing was particularly infuriated by Australia's leading role in international calls earlier this year for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which began in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Since then, China has taken steps to curb key Australian imports and encouraged Chinese students and tourists to avoid the country.

Cheng is the second high-profile Australian citizen to be detained in Beijing after writer Yang Hengjun was arrested in January 2019 on suspicion of espionage.

Earlier this year Australia warned its citizens they faced the risk of arbitrary detention if they traveled to China.

Piketty casts doubt on Chinese book release after censorship row
Paris (AFP) Aug 31, 2020 –

French "rock star" economist Thomas Piketty said Monday his latest book would probably not be released in China after the publisher demanded too many cuts.

His "Capital and Ideology" surveys the rapid rise of inequality around the world and includes attacks on the "plutocracy" of the Chinese regime, which he says has overtaken Western countries.

"In short, they want to remove all references to contemporary China, and in particular to inequality and transparency in China. I have refused these conditions, and indicated that I will only accept a full translation without any kind of cut," Piketty told AFP by email.

His 2013 book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" made him a global star in his field and sold hundreds of thousands of copies in China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has used his research on rising inequality in the United States and Europe as proof of the superiority of the Chinese communist model.

"The other Chinese publishing houses in contact with my French publisher have indicated that they would also demand cuts, so at this stage it is likely that this book will not be published in mainland China," Piketty said, confirming an earlier report in the South China Morning Post.

– 'Allies of hypercapitalism' –

The offending references feature in a chapter dealing with communist and post-communist societies, during which the economist attacks the "oligarchic and kleptocratic drift" of Russia and the "plutocracy" of China.

"In the late 2010s, China… is only slightly less inegalitarian than the United States and significantly more so than Europe, whereas it was the most egalitarian of the three regions at the beginning of the 1980s," Piketty wrote in a passage he said was taken out by the Chinese publisher.

In another excised passage, he wrote that Russia, China and some Eastern European countries had become the "staunchest allies" of "hypercapitalism".

"This is a direct consequence of the disasters of Stalinism and Maoism and the consequent rejection of all egalitarian internationalist ambitions," he wrote.

Piketty's Chinese publisher Citic Press did not comment directly on his claims but told AFP the copyright of "Capital and Ideology" was still being negotiated.