SHANGHAI-The U.S. government sent back to China a former official long wanted on corruption charges, in an act hailed by Beijing as a major diplomatic success.

Yang Xiuzhu’s arrival in Beijing Wednesday, 13 years after she fled eastern China, was carried live on China Central Television, as is common with such repatriations. Wearing a puffy winter jacket, Ms. Yang, now 70 years old, smiled as she stepped unsteadily off an American Airlines plane without handcuffs and was helped by two policewomen into a van marked “VIP”…