Trump Says He Discussed China’s Political Prisoners With Xi at Summit
HeraklesUpdated 3 hours Ago3 Mins read
President Donald Trump has said he discussed with Chinese leader Xi Jinping the release of political prisoners in China, including Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai and American scholar U Min Zin.
“I did,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Sept. 30 when asked if he raised the cases of Lai, Min Zin, and other political prisoners with Xi during their summit in Washington last week.
“We talked, and I think we had some very, very important discussions. Hopefully, fruitful discussions,” Trump added.
The
summit
marked Xi’s first state visit to the White House in more than a decade. It was the second time the two leaders had met this year, following their
talks
in Beijing in May.
At the Beijing summit, Trump successfully secured the release of Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, the leader of an underground church in China, who
reunited
with his family in the United States in July.
Prior to the summit last week, a bipartisan
group
of lawmakers urged Trump to raise cases of prisoners of conscience when meeting Xi.
Lai, 78, has long been an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and was the owner of Apple Daily, a now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong. He was detained in 2020 under Beijing-imposed national security law and
sentenced
to 20 years in prison in February.
His son, Sebastien Lai, at a congressional hearing ahead of the Washington summit,
said
he had been hearing about his father’s health “declining every single day.”
“His imprisonment makes him a symbol of injustice. His death in prison would be a disgrace,” he said.
The Support Jimmy Lai campaign, led by Sebastien Lai and his sister, Claire Lai, called Trump’s remarks “very hopeful,” according to a Sept. 30 post on X.
“It’s imperative that Xi knows that the US will not back down until Jimmy is free,” the group said.
Min Zin, a U.S. citizen and the executive director of the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar,
accepted
an invitation from a Chinese academic institution but was detained upon arrival at an airport in China’s southwestern Yunnan Province on June 3 on espionage allegations.
Sylvin Zin, the wife of Min Zin, told lawmakers during a hearing in September that her husband was initially subjected to interrogations lasting four to six hours a day and held in a small cell where the lights remained on around the clock.
She said that he was allowed outside only when being transported to and from meetings with U.S. consular officials, and that he was hooded and shackled during those trips.
“My husband’s sudden detention has upended our lives, leaving our fourteen-year-old daughter, Suu, deeply anxious and unsure about our future,” she wrote in her testimony.
She said Trump’s remarks have given her family “renewed hope,” according to her X post on Sept. 30.
Min Zin is one of two Americans detained in China whom Washington has
designated
as “wrongfully detained,” making efforts to secure their release a top priority. The other is Chen Youlin, a Chinese-born American seismologist, who has been
imprisoned
since 2024.
In early September, the U.S. State Department
updated
its travel advisory to China, adding an explicit warning of the risk of “unjust arrest or detention.”
Experts have
argued
that Beijing’s detention of Min Zin amounts to “hostage diplomacy,” which is the use of judicial systems by governments to arbitrarily arrest or detain foreigners in an effort to gain political leverage.
At the same September congressional hearing that Sebastian Lai attended, Peter Mattis, president of The Jamestown Foundation, argued that Washington should respond “asymmetrically or disproportionately,” using leverage in areas that matter to CCP leadership to deter future detentions and restrictions on U.S. citizens.
Mattis pointed to China’s continued reliance on U.S. technology and its economic vulnerabilities as potential sources of leverage. He added that Washington should make clear that arbitrary detention of Americans is “inherently escalatory and destabilizing” and could jeopardize the CCP’s broader interests in maintaining a stable relationship with Washington.
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