Democrats Urge Trump to Confront Xi Over Prisoners of Conscience in China During Summit

A group of Democrats from both congressional chambers is urging President Donald Trump to bring up cases of political prisoners in China when he meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), ranking members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), sent a letter to Trump on Sept. 21. They said that advocating for the release of prisoners of conscience and demanding humane and transparent treatment of detainees should be a “basis for further discussions on the development of relations” between the United States and China. 

“U.S. leadership in this area still holds great weight. Even a single mention of a detainee’s name by a senior U.S. official, let alone by yourself, can significantly increase that individual’s chances of clemency or improved treatment,” the lawmakers said. 

Naming 22 prisoners of conscience, the lawmakers urged Trump to be “their champion” during his high-stakes White House summit with Xi on Sept. 24 and 25.

Among those named was U Min Zin, a U.S. citizen and independent scholar. According to the letter, Min Zin 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.

Chinese authorities accused him of “engaging in espionage activities and endangering China’s national security”—allegations that the lawmakers described in the letter as “spurious.”

Others on the lawmakers’ list include four Uyghurs—Gulshan Abbas, Ekpar Asat, Ikram Nurmehmet, and Ilham Tohti—and three Falun Gong practitioners—Wang Youmei, Xu Na, and Zhao Ying. 

Xu was sentenced to eight years in prison in January 2022. She was one of 11 Falun Gong practitioners who have been sentenced for supplying materials to The Epoch Times that exposed the early toll of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. 

Zhao, in her 80s, was sentenced to 42 months in prison in 2024. “She suffers from serious health conditions, including cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, and has been reported to be in critical condition in custody,” the letter reads.

Wang has been detained since April. Her daughter previously told The Epoch Times that the family has been unable to visit her while she is in custody.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that combines meditative exercises with moral teachings centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. The practice became very popular in China in the late 1990s, with official estimates putting the number of practitioners at more than 70 million. 

Since the start of the persecution in July 1999, hundreds of thousands of practitioners have been subjected to torture while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center, and thousands have been killed as a result of torture and abuse in police custody. Due to strict censorship in China, the actual death toll is likely to be many times higher.

The lawmakers also named Zhang Zhan, a Chinese citizen journalist; Mei Shilin and Fang Yirong, two Chinese activists; Yang Rongli, a Protestant house church pastor; Xin Ruoyu, a Chinese Christian; and Konchog Choedrag and Go Sherab Gyatso, two Tibetan Buddhist monks.  

Three Hongkongers were also named in the letter—Jimmy Lai, Gwyneth Ho, and Chow Hang-tung. 

Lai, who founded the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily in Hong Kong, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February. He has now spent nearly six years in prison since his arrest in 2020.

The letter sent to Trump was co-signed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Rep. James R. Walkinshaw (D-Va.), and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.). 

Transnational Repression

Merkley, McGovern, and other lawmakers also sent a separate letter to Rubio, U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and Attorney General Todd Blanche.

In their letter, also dated Sept. 21, the lawmakers warned that lawful and peaceful protests against Xi during his upcoming trip could become targets of disruption, monitoring, or physical attacks by the Chinese regime and its proxies. They described these actions collectively as transnational repression.

“Xi’s visit comes at a time when China’s transnational repression has intensified,” the letter reads. 

“Make no mistake: the Chinese government’s attempts to silence its critics inside our borders [are] a direct assault on U.S. sovereignty and the rights that belong to every person in this country, regardless of their citizenship.” 

The lawmakers told the four Trump administration officials that their agencies “must be prepared” to prevent and respond to these acts of repression, reminding them of a “wave of harassment and physical violence from Chinese diplomats and pro-China diaspora groups” against peaceful protesters during Xi’s 2023 trip to San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.  

The Hong Kong Democracy Council and Students for a Free Tibet documented the 2023 street violence in their 2024 report and called on the Department of Justice to investigate the activities of the Chinese regime’s United Front foreign influence organizations in the United States. 

What happened in 2023 “cannot be allowed to happen again,” the lawmakers said. 

They warned that China has expanded its laws since 2023 and now claims authority over actions on U.S. soil, citing its recently enacted Ethnic Unity Law whose extraterritorial clause attempts to extend Beijing’s repression abroad.

“By requiring ideological conformity with the Chinese Communist Party’s conception of ‘ethnic unity’ and asserting legal authority over conduct outside China, the law creates a broader basis for targeting activists, ethnic minorities, and critics abroad,” the letter reads. 

The letter sent to the four Trump administration officials was also co-signed by Van Hollen, Walkinshaw, Suozzi, Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii).