(OSV News) -- While global issues of Iran, Taiwan, trade and AI are major topics dominating talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at a two-day summit, Catholics around the world hope a major human rights issue is on the table -- the freedom of Jimmy Lai, Catholic media entrepreneur and activist who has spent over 1,900 days in prison.
His daughter told Aid to the Church in Need that in prison, her father "looks for Christ's hands nailed to the cross, in contrast to the closed fist that symbolizes communism."
Before leaving for Beijing for the May 13-15 state visit -- the first visit of a U.S. president to China in almost a decade -- Trump said that he would discuss the case of a Catholic political prisoner when he meets the Chinese president.
Trump said May 11 he planned to discuss the imprisonment of Lai. However, he suggested the prominent Catholic and pro-democracy campaigner "caused a lot of bedlam."
Lai, prominent Hong Kong media tycoon, was convicted of national security offenses under the city's controversial national security law. U.S. officials, including Trump, have cast the charges leading to Lai's conviction as fabricated, arguing that they were evidence that the Chinese Communist Party is seeking to silence dissent.
In remarks to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump was asked if he planned to raise Lai's case during his meeting with the Chinese president.
"I'll bring them both up," Trump told reporters, referring to Lai and the arrest of Ezra Jin Mingri, founder and pastor of Zion Church, another political prisoner whose case has provoked grave religious freedom concerns from U.S. officials.
Trump said they were seeking the release of "people that are really innocent people, and they're being held captive."
The U.S. president so far has discussed the Iran war and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz during a summit with President Jinping, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC News in a May 14 interview with the network, adding that the United States was not asking for China's help with Iran. As of May 14, no news was released regarding Lai following the first day of talks.
The Hill reported May 13 that Trump is facing growing calls from Republicans and Democrats to press the Chinese president to release Lai.
"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," the report said.
"The only thing that saves him is his faith," Claire Lai said of her father in ACN's podcast "Faith Under Siege," hosted by Robert Royal. "He answers all anxiety with a very deep faith in our Lord. He looks for our Savior's hands nailed to the cross, in contrast to the closed fist that symbolizes communism."
Lai was a poor refugee from South China when he landed in Hong Kong just a few years after the communist takeover, said a May 12 press release from ACN. He went on to successful careers in the clothing and media industries. He is considered one of the main contributors to Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.
He was arrested in 2020 under a new national security law, and his daily newspaper Apple Daily was shuttered under pressure from the Chinese government. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The 78-year-old remains in solitary confinement.
"They dragged this trial out for many years," Sebastien Lai, Claire's brother, told The Wall Street Journal May 11, calling it a "showtrail, nationally condemned."
"At this point, the 20-year sentence is a death sentence," Sebastien said. "My father is 78, he's not in good health, he's been kept in horrible conditions, so if something isn't done for him to be freed, he will die in prison."
It was in the years leading up to the 1997 British handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China that Lai became a Catholic. Claire and Sebastien were born around that time.
"He realized when he was converting to Catholicism that the only thing that can conquer fear and doubt is God's love, and he took that up to this day," Claire said in ACN's podcast.
"We were brought up to believe in the sanctity of the individual," Claire recalled of her childhood in Hong Kong. Her father "believed that giving information to people was a way to allow them to exercise their agency and that's how you come into freedom. That's basically what the sentence is about."
Lai spoke in the podcast of prison guards' maltreatment of her father, including enticing him with food on Fridays, while he tries to fast.
And yet, she said, "he feels extremely blessed to be a witness to the faith."
"My father's imprisonment has taught him, and me, the true meaning of 'godly grief,' according to St. Paul," Claire said in her Religion and Liberty Online editorial for the Acton Institute.
"In his letters from prison, my father reflects a desire to repent and get closer to God. In times of weakness, he is reminded of what Archangel Gabriel told the Blessed Mother: 'Do not be afraid,'" she wrote.
"In one prayer he sent to me, he wrote, 'Oh Lord my God, let me not walk my own way without thinking of you. … I seek your leave for everything I do and give myself wholly to you.' He trusts the provisions of Divine Providence and abundance of God's mercy rendering his cross easier to carry," she wrote.
She recounted how she grew up "admiring those who have shown exemplary faith in turbulent times, whether it was St. Gregory the Great or St. John Paul II."
In his exercise of faith from his prison cell, Lai's daughter said, "I have come to know that exemplary faith perhaps comes from the knowledge of God's unconquerable grace in the chaos of spiritual warfare. For all his fallibilities, my father has found a resting place at the foot of the Cross on Cavalry, which he describes as 'a divine gift, like I have been touched by God.' In this he has made it clear for us to see the wellspring of our Savior's mercy."
