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 The issue is a thorny one, as no extradition treaty exists between
the U.S. and China. That has made America, and other countries such
as Australia and Canada, attractive destinations for Chinese
officials fleeing the country and a haven for the assets they have
allegedly stolen.
Western governments have long been reluctant to hand over suspects
because of a lack of transparency and due process in China’s
judicial system. International human rights groups say torture is
used as a tool for extracting confessions in Chinese interrogations.
Government officials convicted of corruption have been sentenced to
death.
Officials from both countries met for two days in the Philippines
last month, with the U.S. delegation led by David Luna, the U.S.
State Department's senior director for National Security and
Diplomacy.
Luna confirmed to Reuters that he attended the meetings and said
talks will reconvene in August and will include law enforcement and
legal experts. The countries will share specific intelligence on
allegedly corrupt Chinese officials and stolen assets and will also
discuss potential ways to send the fugitives back to China.
 The Chinese Foreign Ministry declined immediate comment, as did the
country's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the
Communist Party's anti-corruption body.
Alternatives to extradition exist, U.S. officials say, including
deportation for violations of U.S. immigration law.
Canada, which has no formal extradition treaty with China, has
recently expelled suspects wanted by Beijing, including Lai
Changxing. Lai, a businessman wanted for corruption, was sent back
to China from Canada in 2011 on the promise that he would not be
executed. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Last year Chinese officials said more than 150 "economic fugitives",
many of them described as corrupt government officials, were in the
U.S. Neither country has publicly provided a figure for how much
stolen money has been smuggled out of China and into the U.S.
But the Washington-based Global Financial Integrity group, which
tracks illegal outflows from countries, estimates that between 2003
and 2012, $1.25 trillion of illicit cash left China. Some of that
moves around the world through dummy bank accounts and other means,
and once in the United States, it is often invested in real estate,
making its original source hard to trace.
The preliminary talks between U.S. and Chinese officials were held
on January 27 and 28 in Clark, Philippines, as part of an
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) international working
group, called ACT-NET. The group, which involves multiple APEC
countries, including Russia, was formed in Beijing in August 2014 to
fight cross-border corruption.
The talks took place amid an intensifying and far-reaching
anti-corruption drive in China by President Xi Jinping, and a
ramping up of efforts between the U.S. and China, including the
sharing of criminal intelligence, to crack down on cross-border
corruption.
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ALTERNATIVES TO EXTRADITION
It was agreed after the talks that more formal negotiations within
the ACT-NET forum will take place in August back in the Philippines,
which chairs APEC for 2015. The U.S. delegation will likely include
officials from the State Department, the Department of Justice, and
the Department of Homeland Security, Luna said.
Luna said law enforcement officials from both countries will discuss
specific cases and possible joint investigations into Chinese
fugitives and stolen assets.
"There are alternatives to extradition”, Luna told Reuters. He said
legal avenues being explored to potentially circumvent the lack of
an extradition treaty between the U.S. and China include the United
Nations convention against Corruption, and the U.N. convention on
Transnational Organized Crime.
Luna said there is no formal agreement to return stolen assets to
China, but the issue is "part of an ongoing bilateral dialogue,
there are ongoing cases, and it is a priority." He refused to
divulge details about any specific investigations.
The U.S. has applauded China’s recent anti-corruption campaign and
is invested in helping in the fight, and more generally in fighting
international corruption. Part of the APEC leaders’ declaration
after their 2014 summit in Beijing was a commitment to “deny safe
haven for corrupt officials and their illicitly-acquired assets.”
In December Luna's boss, William Brownfield, the State Department's
assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement
affairs, said both countries had identified "a finite number" of
alleged Chinese fugitives "and agreed to develop a strategy to
address each of those."
Brownfield spoke after a December meeting in Beijing of the US-China
Joint Liaison Group on Law Enforcement Cooperation, a separate forum
from the APEC group that met in the Philippines.
Heading the Chinese delegation in the Philippines, according to an
agenda seen by Reuters, was Cai Wei, deputy director general of
China's Department of International Cooperation in the Ministry of
Supervision. Also present was Chen Long, director of the Department
of International Cooperation.
(Reporting by Tim Reid. Additonal reporting by Sui-Lee Wee and Ben
Blanchard in Beijing.; Editing by Sue Horton)
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