BEIJING—Chinese authorities have released all employees of a U.S. corporate due diligence firm detained in Beijing two years ago in an apparent move to reassure foreign firms operating in China amid sliding foreign investment in the country.
The detained Beijing employees at Mintz Group, all Chinese nationals, have been freed, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Tuesday.
News of their release came on the heels of the just-concluded China Development Forum in Beijing attended by dozens of foreign CEOs, a platform that Chinese officials had used to bring home the message that the Chinese regime is open to foreign capital.
Chinese authorities had detained the five local staff in a raid that turned out to be the beginning of a sweeping clampdown on consultancy and due diligence firms, including Bain & Company's office in Shanghai and Capvision Partners Ltd.
The employees of Mintz, which specializes in background checking, fact gathering, and internal investigations, were detained in March 2023 just before the same high-profile economic forum, casting a chill on foreign sentiment toward China.
Reuters reported in May 2023, citing sources, that Mintz had engaged in corporate due diligence work examining the possible use of forced labour in supply chains linked to China's Xinjiang region.
Mintz has 12 offices around the world and more than 280 investigators, according to its website.
Ahead of this year's China Development Forum, Chinese officials had stepped up meetings with top foreign executives to reassure them of the attractiveness of the Chinese market as foreign investment plummeted.
Foreign direct investment in China dropped 27.1 percent in local currency terms in 2024 compared with a year earlier, according to official data, the most since the 2008 global financial crisis. China's official data is difficult to verify, as the Chinese regime routinely suppresses or alters information.