Washington D.C. – The Washington Post, August 05, 2024
Family members of U.S. citizens wrongfully detained in China fear a window for progress is closing.
As three American families welcome loved ones back from unjust detention in Russia, many other families with relatives still stuck in foreign prisons are asking the U.S. government for more help. Some of the longest suffering families are those with relatives imprisoned in China. President Biden should use his last months in office to redouble his efforts to bring these Americans home.
Three U.S. citizens are deemed “wrongfully detained” in China by the U.S. State Department: Kai Li, Mark Swidan and David Lin. Dozens of family members of U.S. citizens have also been imprisoned or disappeared in China with no justification, cases the State Department informally presses Beijing on. With only a few months left in Biden’s term, their advocates see an ominous deadline. Having spent years working with Biden administration officials, they worry about starting from scratch with a new team. They also understand that any new administration will need to reset its relationship with Beijing, which means that freeing American prisoners might not be its top priority.
“President Biden has certainly shown a willingness to make these kinds of difficult decisions to bring home Americans and I hope he will see it through with China,” Harrison Li, the son of Kai Li, told me. “If we let this go until after the election, that will just bring a whole new suite of uncertainty.”
High-profile prisoners tend to get more U.S. government attention and therefore are more likely to be part of any dealmaking. These three Americans in China are just ordinary people, without top government connections or powerful organizations supporting their cause. But their families suffer from their absence just the same.
If the Biden administration can successfully negotiate prisoner releases with the governments in Russia, Iran and Venezuela, then why not with China? Biden’s legacy as a president who returned U.S. citizens to their families would be secured if he could get this deal done.
