Three U.S. citizens imprisoned by China were on their way home late Wednesday, U.S. officials said, culminating years of U.S. diplomatic efforts to free Americans Washington says were wrongfully detained by Beijing.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he spoke to Kai Li, Mark Swidan and John Leung “as they traveled home to the United States just in time for Thanksgiving.”
“I told them how glad I was that they were in good health and that they’ll soon be reunited with their loved ones,” Blinken posted on X, formerly Twitter.
The White House announced the release of the Americans on Wednesday.
“We are pleased to announce the release of Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and John Leung from detention in the People’s Republic of China,” a National Security Council spokesperson said in a statement.
The development is a diplomatic win for President Joe Biden, who will be leaving office in January. With the men’s release, “all of the wrongfully detained Americans” in China have been returned, the spokesperson added.
Biden and his aides have raised the issue of the three Americans with Beijing repeatedly, according to U.S. officials. In his last in-person meeting on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru earlier this month, Biden also spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping to press for their return.
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Thursday three Chinese nationals “wrongfully imprisoned” by the United States had been returned to China.
Mark Swidan had been held since 2012 and received the death sentence in 2019. He maintained his innocence.
John Leung was sentenced last year to life in prison. A U.S. citizen who also holds permanent residency in Hong Kong, he was detained on April 15, 2021, by the local bureau of China’s counterintelligence agency in the southeastern city of Suzhou, according to The Associated Press.
Kai Li, a naturalized U.S. citizen who owned an export business and worked in New York, was arrested after flying into Shanghai in September 2016. He was placed under surveillance, interrogated without a lawyer and accused of providing state secrets to the FBI. In 2018, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage, a charge that he has denied.
The release comes just two months after China freed a Christian pastor from California, David Lin, who had been held since 2006. He was convicted of contract fraud.
Revised travel warning
On Wednesday, the State Department lowered its travel warning for China to “reflect a shift to Level 2,” according to the department’s website.
The current advisory warns travelers, “Exercise increased caution when traveling to Mainland China due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans.”
The alert had previously been at Level 3, telling Americans they should “reconsider travel” to China in part because of the “risk of wrongful detention” of Americans.
VOA Senior White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report. Information from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Press was also used in this report.
