Days before the leaders of the U.S. and China convened a virtual summit this week, China quietly withdrew an American citizen’s ban on leaving the country and the U.S. sent back to China seven of its nationals who had served prison sentences in the U.S., American officials say.

Chinese authorities permitted a Seattle-area man, Daniel Hsu, to leave the country for the first time since 2017, according to one of the U.S. officials. While Chinese authorities hadn’t said Mr. Hsu had done anything wrong in China, he told the Associated...

Days before the leaders of the U.S. and China convened a virtual summit this week, China quietly withdrew an American citizen’s ban on leaving the country and the U.S. sent back to China seven of its nationals who had served prison sentences in the U.S., American officials say.

Chinese authorities permitted a Seattle-area man, Daniel Hsu, to leave the country for the first time since 2017, according to one of the U.S. officials. While Chinese authorities hadn’t said Mr. Hsu had done anything wrong in China, he told the Associated Press last year that local authorities barred him from leaving in an apparent effort to pressure his father, who is in the U.S., to return to face charges in China. The family couldn’t be reached.

U.S. citizen Daniel Hsu, in Shanghai in 2020, has been allowed to leave China.

Photo: /Associated Press

The Chinese nationals deported include some who were the subjects of disputes between Washington and Beijing.

All seven of the Chinese citizens sent home had been convicted of crimes in the U.S. and served their prison terms. They include a former banker long sought by Beijing in one of its biggest-ever financial crime cases; a woman found guilty of unlawfully entering former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida; and a pair caught photographing a U.S. military facility, according to American officials.

The swap came shortly before President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met virtually on Monday in a summit that both sides hoped could cool tensions, by finding areas of mutual concern.

The exchange follows another bout of diplomacy that undid a knot in relations among China, the U.S. and Canada. In late September, U.S. prosecutors reached a deal to resolve criminal charges against a senior executive of Chinese telecom-equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co. that permitted her departure from Canada. At the same time, Beijing released two Canadian men who had been held in Chinese prisons.

Around then, China allowed two U.S. citizens, a brother and sister from Massachusetts, to leave the country for the first time since 2018. They had faced an exit ban related to their father, similar to the one Mr. Hsu said he faced.

Zhang Yujing was convicted in 2019 of unlawfully entering former President Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.

Photo: Handout Image/Zuma Press

A U.S. official saw the latest action in the context of signs in recent months that Beijing has been more willing to engage at a working level on certain bilateral issues. While engagement has been limited, the official said, it has allowed the U.S. to press China to end its practice of coercive exit bans of American citizens from China, while allowing China to air demands that the U.S. repatriate fugitives from China now in the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said all seven Chinese citizens had been convicted of crimes in the U.S. and faced deportation from the U.S. None of the seven could be reached.

Chinese authorities announced the arrival in the country of only one of the group: Xu Guojun, a 63-year-old former Bank of China Ltd. manager who fled China around two decades ago after allegedly playing a leading role in a conspiracy that defrauded the bank of $485 million. Once in the U.S. he was arrested and convicted along with others of laundering ill-gotten funds from the bank fraud through Las Vegas casinos.

The U.S. also deported Zhang Yujing, a woman in her 30s who was convicted in 2019 of unlawfully entering Mr. Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors in the case said when Ms. Zhang entered the resort she was carrying two passports, four cellphones and other electronics, with more in her hotel room including a device used to detect hidden cameras.

Another Chinese woman removed from the U.S., Lu Jing, had been convicted of resisting an officer during a separate incident at the Mar-a-Lago resort.

The U.S. also deported two men in their 20s, former University of Michigan students Zhang Jielun and Wang Yuhao, who had been convicted in a U.S. court of illegally entering a Florida naval base in 2020 and taking photographs.

Chinese authorities have denied any suggestion their citizens spied in the U.S., and have responded to questions about arrests of Chinese nationals in the U.S. with demands that their lawful rights are protected.

ICE said the group included “three individuals convicted of financial crimes, two individuals convicted of photographing and sketching a defense installation, one individual convicted of unlawful entry of a restricted building, and one individual convicted of resisting an officer.”

The U.S. has refused China’s oft-repeated request to set an extradition treaty that would systematize transfers of criminal suspects between the countries, so any agreements are on a case-by-case basis. U.S. officials say while they have no intention for the U.S. to be a safe harbor for Chinese criminals, they are concerned about a lack of transparency in the Chinese legal system and findings that criminal suspects there can be tortured or executed.

Write to Gordon Lubold at Gordon.Lubold@wsj.com, James T. Areddy at james.areddy@wsj.com and Aruna Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com