{"id":19286,"date":"2024-11-27T18:51:44","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T18:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=19286"},"modified":"2024-11-27T18:51:44","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T18:51:44","slug":"three-americans-held-for-years-in-china-have-been-released-the-white-house-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=19286","title":{"rendered":"Three Americans held for years in China have been released, the White House says"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Open this photo in gallery:<\/span><\/a>
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Harrison Li holds a photo of his father, Kai Li, an American citizen who had been detained in China.<\/span>Jeff Chiu\/The Associated Press<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three American citizens imprisoned for years by China have been released and are returning to the United States, the White House said Wednesday, announcing a diplomatic agreement with Beijing in the final months of the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

The three are Mark Swidan, Kai Li and John Leung, all of whom had been designated by the U.S. government as wrongfully detained by China. Swidan had been facing a death sentence on drug charges while Li and Leung were imprisoned on espionage charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cSoon they will return and be reunited with their families for the first time in many years,\u201d the White House said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The release comes just two months after China freed David Lin, a Christian pastor from California who had spent nearly 20 years behind bars after being convicted of contract fraud.<\/p>\n

U.S.-China relations have been roiled for years over major disagreements between the world\u2019s two largest economies on trade, human rights, the production of fentanyl precursors, security issues that include espionage and hacking, China\u2019s aggressiveness toward Taiwan and its smaller neighbours in the South China Sea, and Beijing\u2019s support for Russia\u2019s military-industrial sector.<\/p>\n

The release of Americans deemed wrongfully detained in China has been a top agenda item in each conversation between the U.S. and China, and Wednesday\u2019s development suggests a willingness by Beijing to engage with the outgoing Democratic administration before Republican President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s return to the White House in January.<\/p>\n

Trump took significant actions against China on trade and diplomacy during his first term. He has pledged to continue those policies in his second term, leading to unease among many who fear that an all-out trade war will greatly affect the international economy and could spur potential Chinese military action against Taiwan.<\/p>\n

Still, the two countries have maintained a dialogue that has included a partial restoration of military-to-military contacts. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met this month to discuss potential improvements.<\/p>\n

In a separate but related move, the State Department on Wednesday lowered its travel warning to China to \u201clevel two,\u201d advising U.S. citizens to \u201cexercise increased caution\u201d from the norm when travelling to the mainland. The alert had previously been at \u201clevel three,\u201d telling Americans they should \u201creconsider travel\u201d to China in part because of the \u201crisk of wrongful detention\u201d of Americans.<\/p>\n

The new alert removes that wording but retains a warning that the Chinese government \u201carbitrarily enforces local laws, including exit bans on U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries, without fair and transparent process under the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biden administration had raised the cases of the detained Americans with China in multiple meetings over the past several years, including this month when Biden spoke to Xi on during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.<\/p>\n

Politico was first to report the men\u2019s release, which it said was part of a prisoner swap with the U.S. The White House did not immediately confirm that any Chinese citizens had been returned home.<\/p>\n

Li, a Chinese immigrant who started an export business in the U.S., was detained in September 2016 after flying into Shanghai. He was placed under surveillance, interrogated without a lawyer and accused of providing state secrets to the FBI. A U.N. working group called his 10-year prison sentence arbitrary and his family said the charges were politically motivated.<\/p>\n

Leung was sentenced last year to life in prison on spying charges. He was detained in 2021, by the local bureau of China\u2019s counter-intelligence agency in the southeastern city of Suzhou after China had closed its borders and imposed tight domestic travel restrictions and social controls to fight the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

After Leung\u2019s sentencing, the U.S. recommended \u2013 though without citing specific cases \u2013 that Americans reconsider travelling to China because of arbitrary law enforcement and exit bans and the risk of wrongful detentions.<\/p>\n

Swidan had been jailed for 12 years on a drug charge and, along with Li and Leung, had considered by the State Department to be wrongfully detained.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source: <\/em> politics.einnews.com\u2026<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery: Harrison Li holds a photo of his father, Kai Li, an American citizen who had been detained in China.Jeff Chiu\/The Associated Press Three American citizens imprisoned for years by China have been released and are returning to the United States, the White House said Wednesday, announcing a diplomatic agreement with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}