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The Biden administration and China have carried out a prisoner swap, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday, securing the release of three Americans who the U.S. government has long said were wrongfully detained by Beijing.

Americans Mark Swidan, Kai Li and John Leung were en route back to the United States on Wednesday, the White House said, capping months of diplomatic pressure on China and securing a win for the Biden administration in its waning time in office.

“Soon they will return and be reunited with their families for the first time in many years,” the White House said in a statement. It said no other Americans are wrongfully detained in China. The senior U.S. official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

Four Chinese citizens were released in the United States in return, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Thursday: three who were “wrongfully detained” and one “fugitive.”

The three Americans have been the focus of high-level discussions for months, including most recently a direct conversation between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping this month at a summit in Peru. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan also pressed their Chinese counterparts in meetings in recent months.

The swap is a goodbye gift to Biden and an olive branch to President-elect <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> so Beijing could facilitate more leader-to-leader communications during Trump’s second term, said Zhao Minghao, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.

“For China, a new playbook has already been opened ahead of Trump’s official comeback. China is doing all it can to preempt a bad start,” Zhao said.

Among the three Americans who were released was<b> </b>Swidan, 49, a Texas businessman who was arrested by Chinese authorities in November 2012 on drug-related charges. His trial, marred by prolonged delays and questionable evidence, lasted more than five years before he was sentenced to death in 2019. In 2020, a Chinese court granted a two-year reprieve, effectively suspending the sentence but leaving Swidan in limbo. That same year, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/Detention/Opinions/Session86/A_HRC_WGAD_2019_72_AdvanceEditedVersion.pdf" target=_blank>declared him a wrongful detainee</a>, citing significant concerns about due process in his case.

Li, a naturalized U.S. citizen and retired businessman, was detained in 2016 upon arriving at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport. Chinese authorities accused him of espionage, and after a secretive trial in 2018 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Advocates have repeatedly called attention to the lack of transparency in his case, describing it as politically motivated amid worsening U.S.-China relations.

Leung, a 79-year-old American citizen with permanent residency in Hong Kong, was detained in 2021, charged with espionage and sentenced last year to life in prison after an opaque trial.

Leung’s case took a rare public turn when China’s Ministry of State Security issued a social media post late last year detailing allegations against him. The post claimed Leung had been recruited by U.S. intelligence agencies in 1989 and had spent decades spying on Chinese officials and diplomats traveling to the United States.

Espionage and national security trials in China are shrouded in secrecy, with foreign diplomats and observers barred from attending proceedings. The country’s judicial system boasts a conviction rate exceeding 99 percent, leaving defendants with little hope of acquittal once charged.

The White House did not say whom it was freeing in exchange for the U.S. citizens.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Thursday that three Chinese citizens “who had been wrongfully detained by the U.S. government” had returned home, along with a “fugitive who was at large in the U.S. for years.”

She did not provide any further details about their identities, although it is not unusual for China to withhold the names of their nationals traded in such swaps.

“I’d like to reiterate that China consistently opposes the suppression and persecution of Chinese citizens by the U.S. side out of political considerations,” Mao said. “China will continue to take necessary measures, as always, to resolutely safeguard the legitimate interests of our citizens.”

The Chinese government would also “continue efforts to repatriate fugitives and recover criminals, to hunt for those who have fled abroad, and chase them wherever they go,” she said.

Prisoner swaps between the United States and China are rare. In September, American pastor <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/09/15/david-lin-release-china/" target="_blank">David Lin</a> was freed after nearly two decades in Chinese detention, coinciding with the release of <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/former-berklee-college-music-student-sentenced-prison-threatening-individual-promoting" target="_blank">Xiaolei Wu</a>, a Chinese student convicted in the United States for threatening pro-democracy activists. Neither government confirmed the releases were part of a swap.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said Wednesday that he had been pushing U.S. and Chinese authorities for years for the release of Li, whose family lives in Huntington, New York.

“Even when it felt like there was no hope, we never stopped believing that one day Mr. Li would return home,” Schumer said in a statement.

<i>Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report.</i>

Member of the "Pegasus Project" team that won a George Polk Award, 2021.

Yale University, BA in History

Deep Springs College

Michael Birnbaum is a national security reporter for The Washington Post, covering the State Department and diplomacy. He previously served more than a decade in Europe as The Post’s bureau chief in Brussels, Moscow and Berlin, reporting from more than 60 countries, and he covered climate and security from Washington. He joined The Post in 2008.

Michael Birnbaum

University of Technology Sydney, BA in Communications/Journalism 

University of Technology Sydney, BA in International Studies

Cate Cadell is a Washington Post national security reporter covering the U.S.-China relationship. She previously reported for Reuters News, where she was a politics correspondent based in Beijing.

Cate Cadell

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