Alva Review-Courier -

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Australian government said on Thursday a Chinese-Australian writer had been detained in China in what a friend suspects is part of a backlash against Canada's arrest of a top Chinese telecommunications executive.

Novelist and influential 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.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affai...