When Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington today, there will be many issues on their agenda, from tariffs and trade to artificial intelligence and Taiwan.
But Trump must ensure that China’s human rights crisis is high up on the list, too. Even if the U.S. president is not focused on these issues, others around him—his supporters, advisors, and those in Congress—do care. Trump himself has made promises in the past, such as getting Jimmy Lai out of jail, and has had successes that he can build on, such as securing the release of Ezra Jin Mingri.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington today, there will be many issues on their agenda, from tariffs and trade to artificial intelligence and Taiwan.
But Trump must ensure that China’s human rights crisis is high up on the list, too. Even if the U.S. president is not focused on these issues, others around him—his supporters, advisors, and those in Congress—do care. Trump himself has made promises in the past, such as getting Jimmy Lai out of jail, and has had successes that he can build on, such as securing the release of Ezra Jin Mingri.
While there are too many religious and political prisoners of conscience to raise by name, Trump should demand the release of a number of individuals and address the gravity of the situation: a genocide of the Uyghurs, which was recognized as such by both his administrations, most recently in a State Department statement on Sept. 10 of this year, and the Biden administration; atrocities in Tibet; the intensifying crackdown on Christians; and the dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedoms.
When the two leaders met in Beijing last May, Trump pressed for the release of Jin, a prominent Christian pastor and the founder of Zion Church. Less than two months after that meeting, on the eve of the 250th anniversary of American independence, China freed him and permitted him to leave the country and join his family in the United States. Trump has shown that he can secure the release of prisoners when he chooses to.
In this next meeting, Trump must press Xi to free Jin’s approximately eight colleagues, pastors, and leaders of Zion Church, who have been in detention for almost a year for simply holding religious worship services that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did not authorize. He must also demand the release of jailed pastor and U.S. permanent resident John Cao, who has been in a Chinese jail for almost a decade and is now dying of cancer.
Trump must make it clear that U.S.-China relations cannot improve while the CCP continues to persecute and imprison peaceful religious believers—whether they are Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghur Muslims, or Tibetan Buddhists. Xi’s campaign of Sinicization of religion, which in reality means the coercion and cooptation of religion to serve the CCP’s purposes, should be highlighted as a roadblock to better bilateral relations. Another thing that should be highlighted is the litany of repressive laws such as Hong Kong’s draconian national security law and the new ethnic unity law, which criminalizes criticism of the CCP wherever it takes place around the world.
The case of U.S. citizen Min Zin, a Myanmar-born scholar who was arrested in China in June, should be high on Trump’s list. Zin traveled to China after being invited to participate in an academic conference in Kunming but was arrested at the airport and has been in detention ever since.
Trump must also prioritize Hong Kong. He should press once again for the release of Jimmy Lai, the 78-year-old entrepreneur and pro-democracy activist who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence. Lai, who has already spent the past six years in jail, will die in prison if international pressure for his release is not sustained. With the recent heartbreaking news that his 30-year-old daughter Claire has been diagnosed with cancer, the case for Lai’s release on humanitarian grounds is overwhelming. Trump has made promises to get Lai out, but this time he must strain every sinew to do so.
There are other Hong Kong prisoner cases that Trump should also raise. He should urge Xi to free Joshua Wong, the young pro-democracy activist who began his peaceful campaign as a teenager and became one of the faces of Hong Kong’s democracy movement. Now 29, he has spent most of his twenties in prison, and he faces new charges of “collusion with foreign forces” under Hong Kong’s national security law, which could result in a life sentence. Given the United States’ refusal to give Wong asylum in 2020, in the full knowledge that he would end up in prison for many years, Trump has a particular responsibility to prioritize his release.
Lawyers Chow Hang-tung and Albert Ho, together with trade unionist Lee Cheuk-yan, who were recently sentenced to seven years in jail for organizing a peaceful candlelit vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre, should also be on the list of cases to raise.
Trump must not ignore other cases in mainland China, the Uyghur region, and Tibet, particularly those of individuals who have family members in the United States. He should press Xi to free Uyghurs such as Dr. Gulshan Abbas, Ekpar Asat, and Ilham Tohti, all of whom have relatives in the United States, along with Chinese human rights defenders and Dr Wang Bingzhang, who has been in prison for 24 years.
He should seek the release of Zhang Yadi, a Chinese student who was arrested last year after her involvement in promoting the understanding of Tibetan culture and the situation in Tibet, and also raise the cases of Tibetan prisoners, including monks and activists jailed for peacefully protesting the CCP’s rule in Tibet. He should ask Xi directly for the whereabouts of the 11th Panchen Lama, who was kidnapped and disappeared in 1995 with his parents and siblings, and Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who disappeared nine years ago.
The CCP’s campaign of transnational repression should also be on the agenda. Following the discovery of secret Chinese police stations operating in the United States and the United Kingdom to surveil and intimidate Chinese dissidents living in those countries, Trump should make it clear to Xi that China’s attempts to influence or intimidate American institutions or citizens are unacceptable. He should cite one of the most recent examples, which involves China’s successful efforts to pressure the U.S.-China Catholic Association to withdraw an invitation to Chinese professor Yang Fenggang to give a keynote address at its conference. Chinese interference in the United States must cease, whether it is infiltration of university campuses, influence on religious bodies, or intimidation of exiled diaspora communities and CCP critics.
Lastly, Trump must deliver a clear warning against further aggression toward Taiwan. He must make it clear that U.S. arms supplies to Taiwan will continue and that the consequences for China of any act of war against the island—whether military invasion or economic blockade—will be severe. Trump’s own claims of U.S. ownership of Greenland and Canada have served to embolden China’s stance toward Taiwan. Only strong deterrence will prevent a catastrophe in the Taiwan Strait. Only if Xi is convinced that the United States intends to defend Taiwan against an invasion will he be persuaded to desist.
Trump has an opportunity to achieve some meaningful wins in this summit, if he is bold enough. As he looks to the second half of his presidency and considers his legacy, he should have one goal in mind: becoming the president who secured the release of Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong, the Zion 8, or any of the other brave Hong Kong, Chinese, Uyghur, and Tibetan prisoners mentioned here, and prevented an invasion of Taiwan. That would be a noble legacy.
