For more than three years, China detained the two Americans Victor and Cynthia Liu against their will in the country with a travel ban.

Last weekend, the siblings were finally allowed to return to the United States, as the State Department has just announced.

The timing should not be a coincidence.

The exit permit was arguably another concession that China made in return for the release of Huawei manager Meng Wanzhou.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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The US Department of Justice withdrew its extradition request against the chief financial officer of the telecommunications company Huawei on Friday, thus enabling Meng to return home after three years of house arrest in Canada.

In return, the leadership in Beijing had initially released the two Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

One day later, Victor Liu and his sister Cynthia were allowed to return to their homeland.

He is a student, she works for the consulting firm McKinsey.

They were arrested together in June 2018 during a family visit to China.

The Chinese authorities apparently wanted to force their father to return from the United States and face the police.

The former bank manager is wanted on charges of fraud.

His wife is in Chinese custody.

But their children were never accused of anything.

They waited in a rented apartment in Shanghai for their departure.

Her case is further evidence of how broadly and arbitrarily China's judiciary has interpreted the possibilities of travel bans to advance court cases. 

Admitted accusations but no admission of guilt

According to a report in the New York Times, there is an indirect link between the Meng Wanzhouse case and the fate of Victor and Cynthia Liu. According to the former American President Donald Trump, at a meeting in Argentina at the end of November 2018, the Chinese head of state Xi Jinping is said to have promised to let the two Americans leave the country. One day later, however, Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the influential Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested in Canada at the instigation of the United States. As a result, the commitment was not honored, reports the newspaper. The siblings' attorney told the New York Times that President Joe Biden's phone call to Xi Jinping three weeks ago, he believed, contributed to the breakthrough.

The exact circumstances that led to Meng's release remain unclear. The White House spokeswoman confirmed on Monday that Biden had campaigned for the release of the two Canadians and "all Americans who cannot leave China" on that phone call. For his part, Xi urged Meng to be released. But there were no negotiations, said Jen Psaki. When asked by a reporter whether the "prisoner exchange" would strengthen the regime in Beijing in its hostage diplomacy, the spokeswoman replied that the US Department of Justice had ruled "independently" on the matter. There is "no connection" to the case of the Canadians. But what was made of it on the Chinese side cannot be influenced, said Psaki.

The Ministry of Justice had suspended the case against the Chinese woman and promised to close it in December 2022.

In return, the finance manager had to admit in writing that she had given the HSBC bank false information about her company's business in Iran, but without pleading guilty. 

Donald Trump's decisions revised

China, meanwhile, is fueling fears that the affair could lead it to the conclusion that hostage diplomacy is successful. A State Department spokeswoman in Beijing described Meng Wanzhou's release on Tuesday as a “historic turning point” in the “fight against the crazy long arm of the American judiciary”. Other countries would also benefit from this in the future, said Hua Chunying. She recalled that Beijing had named the waiver of Meng's extradition as one of several conditions for cooperation with America in other areas. A list of demands was given to US Secretary of State Wendy Sherman during her July visit to Tianjin.

Although China let the two Canadians leave the country just hours after Meng was released, Beijing also insists that there is no connection between the two cases. It was officially reported that Kovrig and Spavor had been released from custody on medical grounds. They had made “written confessions”.

The rapid departure of the Canadians, as well as the Americans Cynthia and Victor Liu, shows that, despite all the rivalry with America, the leadership in Beijing seems to want to get rid of some of the legacies of the confrontation with Biden's predecessor Donald Trump. On the American side, too, some decisions from the Trump era have recently been revised. Among other things, the issuing of visas to Chinese students has been significantly relaxed. Trials have been dropped against five Chinese visiting scholars who were alleged to have concealed their ties to the Chinese military. Measures by the Trump administration against the social networks Wechat and TikTok have also been withdrawn. The White House spokeswoman insisted, however, that giving in to Meng Wanzhouse's case would not mean any change in China's policy."We will continue to hold China accountable."