3 Americans Jailed in China Returning Home After Diplomatic Deal

Harrison Li holds a photo of his father, Kai Li, in Palo Alto, Calif., on Jan. 23, 2024. Jeff Chiu/AP Photo

Three Americans imprisoned in China for years are returning to the United States following a diplomatic agreement between Washington and Beijing.

The three are Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and John Leung, businessmen whom the United States said China had detained on wrongful charges. The White House didn’t state whether any Chinese citizens in U.S. custody were exchanged as part of the deal.

“Soon they will return and be reunited with their families for the first time in many years,” a National Security Council spokesperson told The Epoch Times. With their release, the spokesperson said, “all of the wrongfully detained Americans in the PRC are home.”

The announcement caps off months of negotiations between the Biden administration and China over the deal.

It also follows the release in September of Pastor David Lin, who was arrested in China while on a missionary trip in 2006 and later received a life sentence. A Chinese national serving a nine-month sentence for cyberstalking and threatening a pro-democracy fellow student was freed early from a Pennsylvania prison and returned to China a day after Lin’s release.

Swidan has spent more than a decade in Chinese jail over drug-related charges. A Chinese court sentenced him to death in 2019.

Li, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was convicted of espionage in a short secret trial and put under a 10-year sentence in Shanghai. His son Harrison Li, a Stanford student studying for a doctorate in statistics, said his father had suffered a stroke and lost a tooth during the time in captivity.

“Every day I wake up, I shudder at the thought of him crammed in that tiny cell with anywhere from seven to 11 other people,” he said in a congressional hearing in September that put a spotlight on the detention of Americans in China.

Texas resident Katherine Swidan holds a picture of her son Mark Swidan, who has been held in China for a decade. Courtesy of the Swidan family

Hong Kong-born American Leung, who is now 79, outwardly aligned with pro-Beijing narratives. As a prominent Chinese community leader in Texas, he headed groups that promoted Chinese influence in America and supported the regime’s stance on Taiwan and Hong Kong. Chinese state media have praised him as “patriotic” and noted that during Chinese leaders’ U.S. trips, Leung had met with them many times as an “outstanding Chinese representative.”

A Chinese court in Suzhou, Shanghai, in 2023 sentenced him to life in May 2023 on espionage charges without specifying what activities he engaged in.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said he’s “overjoyed” to hear the three are freed “just in time for the holidays.”

“For years, these men and their loved ones endured far too much pain and suffering at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. While their cases were unique, each marks a disturbing and growing trend of hostage-taking committed by America’s adversaries,” he said in a statement.

He said the United States and its allies must stand resolute in “combatting hostage diplomacy.”

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China who hosted the September hearing where Harrison Li spoke, expressed the same sentiment but noted that there are other Americans who “continue to languish in Chinese prisons” that don’t fit into the United States’ wrongful detention definition. 

There are also other dissidents who were imprisoned over their connections with the United States, Smith said, citing the case of Ekpar Asat, a Uyghur sentenced to 15 years in prison after he participated in a leadership program organized by the U.S. State Department. A Falun Dafa Information Center submission to the hearing also mentioned four U.S. citizens whose parents remain jailed in China because of their belief in Falun Gong, a spiritual faith that the Chinese regime aims to eliminate.

U.S. officials said the administration has repeatedly raised the issue of Americans wrongfully held in China over the past years. National security adviser Jake Sullivan had advocated for their release while visiting China in August, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Joe Biden both brought the issue up while meeting with the Chinese counterparts during the U.N. General Assembly and on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, respectively, according to the officials.