WASHINGTON (OSV News) -- President Donald Trump is scheduled to host Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House in late September, and advocates for Hong Kong's prominent Catholic media tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai said Trump should push for his release from prison during the summit.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a Catholic, who is a longtime lawmaker and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, held a hearing Sept. 16 examining Lai's imprisonment, with Lai's son, Sebastien Lai, among the witnesses.
Trump and other U.S. officials have pushed for Lai's release and have cast the charges leading to Lai's conviction on national security offenses under the city's controversial national security law as fabricated, arguing that they were evidence that the Chinese Communist Party is seeking to silence dissent.
At a May summit in China, Trump asked Xi to release political prisoners of interest to the U.S., including Jimmy Lai and Ezra Jin Mingri, founder and pastor of Zion Church. U.S. officials expressed grave religious freedom concerns in both cases.
As a result of that summit, Jin was released from imprisonment and reunited with his family in the U.S. shortly before Independence Day, but Lai remains in prison, where he is serving a 20-year sentence.
Asked after the hearing how he would advise the White House to shift its strategy on Lai's release, Smith told OSV News that during the upcoming meeting, Trump "has to be absolutely unmovable."
"One quick phone call, and it's done," Smith said of Xi's power to authorize the release. "And that's what President Trump has to convey."
"Don't mince your words," Smith continued. "That doesn't mean you have to be rude. Just say, 'Hey, we care about this wonderful man. Why don't you?' So I'm hoping President Trump will be very upfront and persistent. Don't take no for an answer."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether Trump plans to raise the issue of Lai's imprisonment with Xi during the state visit.
At the hearing, Sebastien Lai said, "At 78, he is the oldest political prisoner in Hong Kong, with his 20-year sentence looming over him. If he's not free soon, he will most likely die in prison."
Jimmy Lai's release, witnesses and Smith argued, has also taken on newfound urgency because his daughter, Claire Lai, 30, was recently diagnosed with cancer.
Claire Lai, Smith said in remarks at the hearing, "was initially scheduled to join her brother today."
"Sadly, Claire was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and has begun treatment. We are thinking of her, praying for her, and wishing her a full recovery," he said.
Sebastien Lai testified he was with his sister as she began chemotherapy in London earlier in September.
"My father learned of his own daughter's diagnosis from a maximum-security prison," Sebastien Lai said. "He cannot hold her hand. She wants nothing more than to have him with her for this fight. We hope the Chinese authorities will consider what compassionate release would mean for her, and for a 78-year-old man who has already suffered enough."
Lai has bipartisan support from U.S. officials. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., another Catholic lawmaker who has advocated for the release of Lai and other Chinese prisoners of conscience, said in remarks on the House floor earlier in September, "this House and this Congress have always joined together in a bipartisan way for freedom -- whether in Hong Kong, Tibet or elsewhere in China -- for human rights in China."
"Let us not forget Jimmy Lai," she said, adding, "We must speak out for freedom. We must not let this be ignored."
Sebastien Lai expressed appreciation for the support the family has received from Trump and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, calling it "moral courage, and my family does not take it for granted."
Jimmy Lai, who founded the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, protested in favor of democratic freedoms -- such as freedom of the press and expression -- in Hong Kong, which was designated a Special Administrative Region of China in 1997, ending British rule of that area after more than 150 years. Following pro-democracy protests in 2019, China implemented a purported national security law the next year, which critics have said has been used to silence the Chinese Communist Party's critics.
Under that law, Lai was arrested in August 2020 and has been imprisoned since December 2020. He pleaded not guilty to the charges before his Dec. 15 conviction.
On Sept. 15, Lai's international legal team called for his release at the United Nations' Human Rights Council.
A number of key issues between the U.S. and China -- artificial intelligence, the U.S. war with Iran, and a potential U.S. arms deal with Taiwan, a self-governing and democratic island that China sees as part of its territory -- are likely to dominate the planned summit.
