American siblings barred from leaving China for 3 years return to US

Reality Check
By Editor_1
US citizens Victor and Cynthia Liu, seen here in a 2017 photo, have now been released  - FRIENDS OF LIU FAMILY
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By Michael Forsythe, Chris Buckley and Katie Benner

China has allowed two American siblings who were barred from leaving the country for more than three years to return to the United States, after a Justice Department deal that cleared the way for a senior executive of Huawei Technologies to go back to China, their lawyer said Monday (27).

The release of Victor Liu, a student at Georgetown University, and Cynthia Liu, a consultant at McKinsey & Co., was the latest in a series of moves that appeared intended to de-escalate tensions between the United States and China after the Huawei deal. The two had never been accused of wrongdoing but were subject to an “exit ban” preventing them from leaving China.

Their release over the weekend coincided with an agreement Friday (24) to release the executive, Meng Wanzhou, who spent nearly three years out on bail at her two luxurious homes in Vancouver, British Columbia, as the United States sought her extradition in a fraud case related to Huawei’s sale of telecommunications equipment to Iran.

Meng arrived in China on Saturday (25).

Within hours, China released two Canadians whom it had held since shortly after Meng was detained, and who had appeared to be jailed as hostages to Meng’s case. The exchange led national security experts to worry that China had created the impression it would use hostages to gain the upper hand in diplomatic and national security matters.

The release of the two Americans on Saturday, the day after Meng’s deal was announced, will most likely strengthen that impression.

The Justice Department said in a statement Monday that it did not cut a deal with Meng in response to the detention of Canadian and US citizens. “The Justice Department reached the decision to offer a deferred prosecution agreement with Ms. Meng independently, based on the facts and the law, and an assessment of litigation risk,” Anthony Coley, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement.

The White House pushed back Monday on the idea that China had used hostages to strengthen its negotiating position. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that the deal with Meng was an action by “an independent Department of Justice,” and that her legal situation was not resolved to get prisoners released.

“I think it’s important to note, and to be very clear about this, there is no link,” Psaki said, referring to the release of the Canadians and the settlement with Meng. She said the White House had made no secret that it wanted the Canadians released.

The siblings went to China in June 2018 to visit their ailing grandfather. On the trip, their mother, also an American citizen, was detained by the police and the siblings were barred from leaving the country. Their father, Liu Changming, a former executive at a Chinese bank, was wanted by the Chinese police for his role in a fraud case. The exit ban, and the jailing of their mother, was seen as a way to coerce their father to return to China and turn himself in.

While the Biden administration said there was no deal tying the resolution of Meng’s case to the release of the siblings, their prolonged detention in China appeared to be related to Meng’s arrest in December 2018, said Evan Medeiros, a professor at Georgetown University who was senior Asia director at the National Security Council under President Barack Obama.

In late 2018, President Donald Trump had raised the issue of Victor and Cynthia Liu’s release at a summit in Argentina with President Xi Jinping of China, and Xi had agreed to let them leave, said Medeiros, who was involved in efforts to release the siblings. But on the day the summit ended, Meng was taken into custody in Canada, and the agreement was off.

“There appears to have been a de facto linkage for China,” Medeiros said in a telephone interview.

US officials have repeatedly warned that exit bans of US citizens were a major concern. In its advisory for US citizens thinking of going to China, the State Department singles them out as a risk. Often people find out that they are blocked only when they try to leave, states the advisory, “and there is no reliable mechanism or legal process to find out how long the ban might continue or to contest it in a court of law.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed senior Chinese officials about exit bans during talks in Anchorage, Alaska, in March, and raised cases of Americans trapped in exit bans during a phone call with China’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, in June.

When the deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, visited China for talks in July, she “raised the cases of American and Canadian citizens” detained in China or held under exit bans, and told Chinese officials that “people are not bargaining chips,” the State Department said at the time.

Last month, Sherman held a meeting in Washington with China’s recently arrived ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, and “reviewed issues” from her earlier talks in China, the State Department said.

The siblings’ lawyer, Marc Ginsberg, credited their release in part to a Sept. 9 phone call between President Joe Biden and Xi. “I’m sure the president’s call with President Xi helped to break a logjam,” said Ginsberg, a former US ambassador to Morocco who has been working pro bono for Victor and Cynthia Liu.

In a telephone interview, he said Victor and Cynthia Liu would have no comment for the news media.

For its part, the Chinese government also denied a trade-off Monday between Meng and the two Canadians, and did not mention any releases from exit bans.

-New York Times

 

 

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