BEIJING, July 24 (Reuters) – China’s top police chief and the head of the U.S. FBI agreed on Friday to deepen cooperation on law enforcement between the two countries, Beijing said after the officials met in the Chinese capital.
Their meeting followed two recent repatriations of fugitives between China and the United States, which do not share an extradition treaty.
Both sides should “engage in more constructive dialogue on the basis of mutual respect and deepen practical cooperation” against a range of criminal activities, China’s Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong said during the talks with FBI Director Kash Patel, an official Chinese summary showed.
Patel said in a statement on X he welcomed the direct engagements with Chinese public security officials, which he said has produced results in shutting off fentanyl precursor pipelines and expanding joint efforts on scam centers, violent crimes against children and a fugitive task force.
On Thursday, China’s Public Security Ministry said it had handed over to U.S. law enforcement authorities a U.S. fugitive wanted for serious violent crimes, including the suspected murder of a spouse and the sexual assault of a young girl.
Chinese and U.S. law enforcement agencies have recently carried out “a series of practical cooperation in areas such as counter-narcotics, repatriation of illegal immigrants, fugitive recovery, combating telecom and cyber fraud, and anti-money laundering”, the ministry said.
It added that such cooperation was in line with a consensus reached between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Days earlier, the U.S. repatriated to Beijing a fugitive accused of kidnapping and killing Chinese citizens overseas, Chinese state media said. The repatriation was hailed by Beijing as “the latest achievement” in implementing the presidents’ consensus.
The FBI’s Patel visited Beijing in November 2025 to discuss fentanyl and law enforcement issues, following a summit in October of that year between Trump and Xi, when the two leaders agreed on cooperation to fight fentanyl trafficking, Reuters reported.
The two presidents are set to meet again in Washington in September, Trump has said.
(Reporting by Xiuhao Chen, Yukun Zhang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Toby Chopra, Helen Popper and Nick Zieminski)
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