China and U.S. Quietly Released Captive Citizens Before Summit

Shortly before President Biden and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, met for a virtual summit this week, the United States sent seven Chinese nationals who had been convicted of crimes back to China, and Beijing lifted an exit ban on an American citizen who had been blocked from leaving for four years. One of the Chinese nationals who was repatriated was a woman who had been convicted in 2019 of trespassing after she had entered former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort with a cache of electronics, according to a senior…

American Siblings Barred From Leaving China for 3 Years Return to U.S.

American officials told Chinese officials repeatedly that exit bans of U.S. citizens were a major concern. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken pressed senior Chinese officials about exit bans during talks in Anchorage 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 R. Sherman, visited China for talks in July, she “raised the cases of American and Canadian citizens” detained in China or held under exit bans,…