China has released five employees of an American corporate investigations firm, the Mintz Group, two years after they were detained as part of a crackdown by Beijing on foreign business consultancies.

中国释放了美国企业调查公司美思明智集团的五名员工。两年前，他们在北京打击外国商业咨询公司的行动中被捕。

“We understand that the Mintz Group Beijing employees who were detained, all Chinese nationals, have now all been released,” the firm said in a statement on Tuesday.

美思明智在周二的声明中表示：“据我们了解，被拘留的美思明智北京公司员工——均为中国公民——目前已全部获释。”

“We are grateful to the Chinese authorities that our former colleagues can now be home with their families,” the company said.

“感谢中国当局，我们的前同事现在可以回家与家人团聚，”该公司说。

The employees’ release comes as China is trying to revive overseas investment to help revive its sluggish economy. Dozens of foreign executives, including Tim Cook of Apple and Cristiano Amon, the chief executive of Qualcomm, are visiting Beijing this week to attend a development forum. Foreign investment that slowed to a crawl during Covid has not recovered in the past couple years, as weak sales and overall demand in the Chinese economy have made it less attractive.

这些员工的获释正值中国试图重振海外投资、帮助振兴低迷的经济之际。本周，包括苹果首席执行官蒂姆·库克和高通首席执行官克里斯蒂亚诺·阿蒙在内，数十名外国高管前往北京参加一个发展论坛。中国经济的销售和总体需求疲软使其吸引力下降，过去几年中，在新冠疫情期间放缓的外国投资一直没有恢复。

Several dozen chief executives and other leaders of global companies were expected to meet with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, on Friday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, according to a person with knowledge of the planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. The gathering would be the third time in 17 months that Mr. Xi has met with the leaders of multinational companies, including in San Francisco in late 2023, after a summit with President Joseph R. Biden Jr. outside the city.

据一位因未被授权置评而要求匿名的知情人士透露，数十位全球公司的首席执行官和其他领导人预计将于周五在北京人民大会堂与中国最高领导人习近平会面。这将是习近平在17个月内第三次会见跨国公司领导人，其中一次是在2023年底在旧金山郊外与拜登总统举行峰会之后。

The business forum was also attended by Senator Steve Daines of Montana, who said in an interview with The New York Times that he was trying to lay the groundwork for a meeting between President Trump and Mr. Xi.

蒙大拿州参议员史蒂夫·戴恩斯也出席了前述商业论坛，他在接受《纽约时报》采访时表示，他正努力为特朗普总统和习近平的会晤奠定基础。

The Mintz employees, who have not been identified, were detained during a raid of the firm’s Beijing office in March 2023. Later that year, China fined the company about $1.5 million for engaging in “foreign-related statistical investigation activities without obtaining approval,” according to Chinese state media.

美思明智集团的员工在2023年3月对该公司北京办事处的突击搜查中被拘留，他们的身份未被公开。据中国官方媒体报道，当年晚些时候，中国对该公司处以1068万元的罚款，理由是“未依法报经批准取得涉外统计调查资格，违法从事涉外统计调查活动”。

Mintz, which is based in New York and has offices around the world, specializes in due diligence work — background checks, asset tracing, and fraud and corruption investigations — for client firms before they make investment decisions.

美思明智的总部设在纽约，在世界各地设有办事处，专门从事客户公司投资决策前的尽职调查工作，包括背景调查、资产追踪、欺诈和腐败调查。

That kind of work became the target of Mr. Xi’s government, which appears to view due diligence into Chinese supply chains and Chinese corporate activity as a threat to national security and the ruling Communist Party’s grip on power.

这类工作已成为习近平政府的目标，在其看来，针对中国供应链和中国企业活动的尽职调查威胁到了国家安全和执政的共产党对权力控制。

A month after Mintz’s office was raided, Chinese authorities visited the Shanghai offices of the U.S. management consulting firm Bain & Company and questioned its employees.

在美思明智的办公室被搜查一个月后，中国当局查访了美国管理咨询公司贝恩公司在上海的办公室，并讯问其员工。

The crackdown on foreign consultancies was also viewed as a response to the Biden administration’s introduction of export controls on advanced U.S. technology, such as semiconductors, to China.

打击外国咨询公司也被认为是在回应拜登政府限制半导体等美国先进技术向中国出口的管制措施。