Hong Kong Following the release of three American citizens who had been held in China for years, the State Department relaxed its travel advice.
China is now on the same level as France and Germany with a travel alert that reads, “Exerce increased caution.” According to the advise released on Wednesday, the alert had previously been at Level 3, the second-highest level, warning Americans to think twice about visiting China due in part to the possibility of unlawful detentions.
The amended advice no longer contains any mention of unjust detentions.
The statement follows the Biden administration’s earlier announcement that it had successfully negotiated the release of Kai Li, Mark Swidan, and John Leung, three Americans who had been held captive in China for years.
Li, Swidan, and Leung were freed in exchange for Chinese nationals held in the United States, including Ji Chaoqun, who was accused of spying for the Chinese government, and Xu Yanjun, an officer of China’s Ministry of State Security who was charged with attempting to steal technology from an American aircraft engine supplier, according to a U.S. government official on Wednesday. The agreement had been negotiated for months, according to officials.
The White House has not made the swap’s specifics publicly available. Three Chinese nationals who were wrongfully held by the United States have safely returned to China, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced Thursday.
Swidan, a 40-year-old Texas businessman, had been detained since 2012 and was given a death sentence with a reprieve in 2019 after being found guilty of drug-related offenses. Li, 62, of Long Island, New York, had been detained since 2016 and was serving a 10-year sentence after being found guilty of espionage. Last year, a court in eastern China declared Leung, who is in his 70s and was arrested in 2021, guilty of spying and sentenced him to life in jail.
The State Department had formally declared Li and Swidan to have been unlawfully detained.
They returned after American pastor David Lin, who was also deemed to have been wrongly jailed, was unexpectedly released in September. Lin was convicted of contract fraud and given a life sentence after spending nearly 20 years in Chinese detention.
All Americans who were wrongfully imprisoned in China have returned home, a State Department spokeswoman said Wednesday.
China has more American captives than any other foreign nation, at around 200, according to the prisoner rights organization Dui Hua Foundation. They comprise both Americans who are detained while an inquiry is underway and those who are incarcerated.
Additionally, the new China warning cautions against the capricious application of local rules, particularly those pertaining to exit restrictions.
Beijing claims that all cases are handled in compliance with the law, despite having criticized the Level 3 travel advice as being overly severe.
“The downgrade of the travel advisory is conducive to normal people-to-people exchanges between the U.S. and China,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated Thursday.
At a routine briefing in Beijing, spokesperson Mao Ning stated, “We have always opposed the artificial creation of a chilling effect and hope the U.S. will continue to create more conveniences to promote cultural exchanges between the two nations.”
In an interview last month, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns had justified the Level 3 advisory.
He told NBC News in Beijing, “The Chinese government protests against the travel advisory, but they have no grounds to do so when we have such a major problem on the ground here.”
Concerns regarding the possible effects on American business and tourism travel to China, as well as academic and other exchanges, were raised by the revised travel warning. Less than 1,000 Americans are thought to be studying in China, compared to an estimated 300,000 Chinese students presently enrolled in American schools and a peak of over 15,000 ten years ago.
Austin Strange, an assistant professor of international affairs at the University of Hong Kong, stated earlier this month at a gathering organized by the university’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World that the Level 3 advisory is a huge matter.
China is prepared to invite 50,000 young Americans to study there over the next five years, according to a statement made by Chinese President Xi Jinping last year.
Strange stated that although some efforts have been made to facilitate that, the travel advice makes it very challenging to do so since it exposes American colleges that fund study abroad programs to significant insurance and other liabilities.
Some said they rejected the downgrading of the travel recommendation, including Peter Humphrey, a British campaigner for foreigners arrested in China who was imprisoned there for two years on what he claims were spurious charges of acquiring illicit information.
According to him, there isn’t any indication that American safety in China has improved.
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