Administration

Trump faces pressure to win China’s release of Jimmy Lai, other political prisoners

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by Julia Manchester - 05/13/26 6:00 AM ET

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by Julia Manchester - 05/13/26 6:00 AM ET

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President Trump is facing growing calls from Republicans and Democrats to press Chinese President Xi Jinping to release media mogul Jimmy Lai and other political prisoners during his high-stakes summit in Beijing this week.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have banded together in recent months to draft letters to Trump asking him to confront Xi over various prisoners detained in China, including Lai, the high-profile Hong Kong business magnate and democracy advocate; Ezra Jin, a Christian pastor at Zion Church; and numerous others.

Trump has said he will bring up the cases of Lai and Jin when he meets with the Chinese leader later this week. However, questions remain over how successful Trump will be in securing their release as he looks to separately negotiate with Xi on hot-button issues including the Iran war, trade and artificial intelligence.

“I don’t have any window yet as to whether he will or whether he won’t,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told The Hill. “But I think that a bipartisan effort to encourage him to is nothing but a positive. If it was a partisan effort, it probably wouldn’t work.”

Kaine, along with Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) and Riley Moore (R-W.Va.), called for Trump in a letter last March to pressure Xi to release Jin.

In a separate letter on Monday, Republicans and Democrats on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) called on Trump to personally raise the cases of Jin; Rushan Abbas, an Uyghur American activist; and Uyghur tech entrepreneur and U.S. permanent resident Gao Zhen during his trip to China.

Meanwhile, the House is expected to vote this week on a resolution calling on Trump to advocate for the release of Jin; Lai; Pastor Gao Quanfu and his wife Pang Yu; and Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas.

“President Trump is used to raising these,” said Sam Brownback, a former U.S. senator from Kansas who served as Trump’s former ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom and authored the book “China’s War on Faith.”

“I think you have to look at the longer-term play that takes place here. This is the first meeting after really some period of time. There’s a lot of tension in the air,” he continued. “I think probably the biggest pull or desire for this meeting will just be to try to reduce the global tension more than anything.”

The high-stakes meeting will mark Trump’s first trip to China since 2017, and it will likely set the tone for relations between Washington and Beijing going forward.

“I feel like it’s not part of the laundry list at the very bottom. It could be elevated to the top of the list,” said Rayhan Asat, a human rights lawyer and Ekpar Asat’s sister.

Ekpar Asat vanished in 2016 after returning to China’s Xinjiang region from a trip to Washington, D.C., through the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program.

“This is the most scary part of all. For years we didn’t know. I didn’t even know what happened to him,” Rayhan Asat said.

She later went to the State Department, and in December of 2019, lawmakers on the Senate Human Rights Committee wrote to the Chinese Embassy asking for Ekpar Asat’s whereabouts.

Rayhan Asat said she has had a number of meetings at the White House under the second Trump administration and feels more “hopeful” because of the administration’s “peace through strength” approach to foreign policy.

“I trust that this is a matter of great concern for the Trump administration, this case specifically,” she said.

Most of the coverage on efforts to release Chinese prisoners has focused on Lai and Jin.

Lai, a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party, was found guilty late last year of conspiring to collude with foreign forces and conspiracy to publish seditious material.

“The Trump administration has not shown a fidelity to human rights as an issue,” said Ryan Hass, director and senior fellow with the China Center at the Brookings Institution.

“But they have indicated at various points interest in specific cases, Jimmy Lai, and Pastor Jin could be another. We’ll have to watch and see if they’ll put emphasis on these issues. My understanding is that he did raise Jimmy Lai in Busan,” he continued, referring to when Trump and Xi last met in Busan, South Korea, in October 2025.

Trump raised eyebrows Monday when he compared Lai to former FBI Director James Comey, saying he’s “caused a lot of bedlam” for Xi. However, the president went on to say that he would like to see Lai freed.

The Department of Justice recently indicted Comey, a political opponent of Trump’s.

The president also invoked Jin’s case, saying he plans to raise it to Xi. Jin was arrested in October for his role in leading the underground Zion Church. Chinese au