[Objective] To address the issues of high switching capacity requirements and significant maintenance costs in traditional bidirectional interlinking converters within active distribution networks, this paper proposes a hybrid converter consisting of a three-phase active converter (TAC) and a three-phase diode rectifier (TDR). [Methods] Firstly, the operating mechanism and control architecture of the hybrid converter were designed: when a power deficit occurred on the DC side, electrical energy flowed through the TDR to the DC side, and the TAC operated as an active filter. Conversely, when there was a power surplus on the DC side, the hybrid converter could feed energy back to the AC grid. Secondly, to address the issue of circulating currents caused by the parallel structure, which led to additional losses, the generation mechanism and influencing factors of the circulating current were analyzed in depth. Accordingly, a circulating current suppression strategy based on multi-carrier pulse width modulation (PWM) was proposed. Among the evaluated strategies, the active zero-state pulse width modulation (AZSPWM) strategy demonstrated the best performance. [Results] Test results showed that, compared with the traditional sinusoidal PWM, the proposed AZSPWM strategy effectively reduced the circulating current. Besides, the total harmonic distortion of the grid-side current was significantly reduced under both rectifier-filter and energy-regeneration modes, and the overall power loss of the system was also cut down markedly. [Conclusion] The proposed hybrid converter topology demonstrates strong feasibility, and the circulating current suppression strategy effectively addresses the inter-module circulation issue, confirming the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed AZSPWM strategy.