US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he discussed the release of political prisoners in China with his counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Washington last week.
“We talked, and I think we had some very, very important discussions. Hopefully fruitful discussions,” Trump told reporters in the White House.
Families had stepped up pressure on the Trump administration to push Beijing to release their loved ones ahead of Xi’s three-day state visit.
In the lead-up to the summit, the White House said Trump expected to bring up cases of people wrongfully detained with the Chinese leader. He has made releasing Americans detained overseas a priority during his presidency.
Trump was asked whether he had raised the cases of political prisoners, such as American scholar Min Zin and former Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, with Xi, to which he replied: “I did.”
The president did not identify specific cases, and it was not immediately clear which prisoners Trump and Xi discussed.
Min and Lai’s family and supporters were among those who wanted Trump to raise the cases with Xi. Trump had raised Pastor Ezra Jin, who was later freed, and Lai when he met Xi in Beijing in May.
Zin was detained in China in June and accused by authorities of espionage and endangering China’s national security.
US officials believe Min’s background as a former student activist in Myanmar and US-funded academic work may have attracted the attention of the Chinese security services, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The family of Chinese-American scientist Chen Youlin, whose case was not mentioned on Wednesday, also ramped up pressure over the last few weeks.
Chen has been accused of espionage by Chinese authorities, likely linked to previous work analysing seismic data that included North Korean nuclear tests.
Chen travelled to China in November 2024 for a month-long holiday and as he prepared to leave, authorities arrested him at the airport in Beijing.
“Sometimes I realise I can no longer clearly remember the sound of his voice, and that breaks my heart,” his wife Rong Yufang told the South China Morning Post.
“Our home feels empty without him and the uncertainty surrounding his future has become a prison for our family as well.”
Chen and Zin have both been formally designated as “wrongfully detained” by the US government, but Beijing has rejected those designations.
The families of Dawn Michelle Hunt and Nelson Wells Jnr, who have spent over a decade in Chinese prisons following drug convictions, also pressed for their freedom on humanitarian grounds ahead of the summit.
Peter Humphrey, a former SCMP China correspondent and fraud investigator who was imprisoned in China with his wife from 2013 to 2015, is working with the Hunt and Wells families.
“We have been constantly hearing from our lobbying contacts in Beijing that the Chinese side is very ready to consider a humanitarian release, so long as there is a request from the American president,” Humphrey said. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
