SYDNEY -- It was well after midnight when the pounding began on Mike Smith's front door. Seven members of China's Public Security Bureau demanded access to his lane house in Shanghai's French Concession district. It was September 2020.
Smith knew he was in trouble. Just a month earlier, Australian journalist Cheng Lei had disappeared from her home in Beijing. And three days earlier the Australian government had revealed the news that her friends and family had feared -- the prominent television anchor was in detention. She is still in jail.
