Trump says political-prisoner cases were discussed with Xi
US President Donald Trump says he raised political-prisoner cases during his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington. Trump did not identify the people discussed, while families and supporters had urged him to press for releases ahead of Xi’s three-day state visit.
US President Donald Trump said he discussed the release of political prisoners with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meeting in Washington last week. Asked by reporters at the White House whether he had raised cases including those of American scholar Min Zin and Hong Kong media executive Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, Trump replied that he had. He did not identify the cases discussed or say whether any release had been agreed.
Trump described the exchange as involving important and potentially fruitful discussions. Families and supporters of detainees had increased pressure on his administration before Xi’s three-day state visit, asking the president to raise their relatives’ cases. Min was detained in China in June and accused by Chinese authorities of espionage and endangering national security.
US officials believe his former student activism in Myanmar and US-funded academic work may have drawn the attention of Chinese security services, according to the Wall Street Journal as cited in the source material. Lai’s family and supporters also wanted Trump to intervene. Trump had raised Lai’s case, as well as that of Pastor Ezra Jin, when he met Xi in Beijing in May.
Jin was later freed. The family of Chinese-American scientist Chen Youlin also sought US action. Chen was arrested at Beijing airport in November 2024 as he prepared to leave China after a holiday.
Chinese authorities have accused him of espionage, an allegation linked in the source material to previous work analysing seismic data involving North Korean nuclear tests. The US Government has formally designated Chen and Min as wrongfully detained, but Beijing has rejected those designations. Families of Dawn Michelle Hunt and Nelson Wells Jnr, who have spent more than a decade in Chinese prisons after drug convictions, also sought humanitarian releases.
The White House had said Trump expected to raise wrongful-detention cases. The president has made securing the release of Americans detained overseas a priority during his presidency.
This independently written report is based on information supplied by the named publisher. Vertrix News has not independently verified the source report.