People who do not follow these developments as they happen will also miss that this state department release is one of John Bolton's pet projects. Most of US messaging on China under this administration should be taken with a grain of salt.
The two high profile cases that has any info, Sandra Han + Liu siblings (which triggered the warning), and Huang Wan, all has to do with father being caught with massive corruption charges in China and family members directly profited from i.e. Han + kids had multi-million dollar realestate holdings in the US under their names. Chinese corruption is typically a family affair. I haven't seen any cases that was unambiguous hostage taking.
The broader issue is many Chinese financial criminals flee to the west where they're safe from prosecution, the west benefits and extradition to PRC isn't on the table. So there's nothing China can do except to wait for the extra dumb one's to return or more commonly, or coerce those abroad to return by threatening innocent family members which to my knowledge has been limited to Chinese nationals. Exit bans seem to be reserved for those complicit in crimes. State department is reaching hard to to make it seem arbitrary when tldr is don't go to China if they want you for crimes, double for dissident activities.
The two high profile cases that has any info, Sandra Han + Liu siblings (which triggered the warning), and Huang Wan, all has to do with father being caught with massive corruption charges in China and family members directly profited from i.e. Han + kids had multi-million dollar realestate holdings in the US under their names. Chinese corruption is typically a family affair. I haven't seen any cases that was unambiguous hostage taking.
The broader issue is many Chinese financial criminals flee to the west where they're safe from prosecution, the west benefits and extradition to PRC isn't on the table. So there's nothing China can do except to wait for the extra dumb one's to return or more commonly, or coerce those abroad to return by threatening innocent family members which to my knowledge has been limited to Chinese nationals. Exit bans seem to be reserved for those complicit in crimes. State department is reaching hard to to make it seem arbitrary when tldr is don't go to China if they want you for crimes, double for dissident activities.