Congressional hearing to examine CCP’s repression of Christians

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., will chair a congressional hearing Sept. 22 examining the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of political and religious prisoners, along with the retaliation faced by their families and advocates, featuring testimony from a pastor freed earlier this year after a sweeping crackdown on his church.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing, titled “The Faces of Repression: Prisoners, Families, and Communities Targeted by the CCP,” is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. in the Hart Senate Office Building and will be livestreamed. Smith, the commission’s co-chair, said the hearing will examine prison conditions, the prolonged detention of American citizens, and the persecution of Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs, including Beijing’s campaign to suppress Uyghur and Tibetan identity under a new Ethnic Unity Law. Lawmakers will also consider the Nelson Wells Jr. and Dawn Michelle Hunt Unjustly Detained in Communist China Act, legislation Smith introduced earlier this year.

Among the witnesses is Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, founder of Beijing’s Zion Church, who was released this year after more than 260 days in detention. Chinese authorities arrested Jin and roughly 30 other pastors and church staff in October 2025. 

A U.S. Senate resolution condemning the crackdown called it the largest coordinated action against a Christian house church in more than four decades. Months before Jin’s release, Zeale News reported that President Donald Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping was weighing Jin’s release while calling a potential release of Hong Kong media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai a “tough one,” underscoring the diplomatic stakes surrounding Beijing’s treatment of high-profile detainees.

Jin was freed July 3 after 266 days in detention and reunited with his family in Los Angeles within 24 hours, AP News reported. “I am free in this country, so warmly welcomed, so I am making a special call not to forget that many more are still detained,” Jin told AP News, describing his release as “a miracle.”

Two other witnesses at the upcoming hearing, Nelson Wells Sr. and Tim Hunt, will testify on behalf of relatives who remain imprisoned. Wells’ son, Nelson Wells Jr., has been held since 2014 after Chinese authorities accused him of smuggling drugs while traveling from Japan for medical treatment. His family says he was deceived into carrying the bags himself and now suffers seizures and chronic pain after more than a decade behind bars. Hunt’s sister, Dawn Michelle Hunt, was enticed to travel to China to claim alleged sweepstakes winnings and was arrested when she was carrying handbags containing hidden drugs given to her by the trip’s organizers. She was initially sentenced to death before her sentence was commuted to life in prison, where she has reportedly experienced sexual abuse and suffers from untreated tumors in her uterus and ovaries. Smith’s bill seeks to press the administration for their release.

Uyghur rights advocate Rushan Abbas, founder of the Campaign for Uyghurs, is also scheduled to testify. Abbas has said Chinese authorities detained her sister, Gulshan Abbas, in 2018 just days after Rushan spoke publicly about Uyghur detentions at a Washington think tank gathering, a move she’s described as retaliation. She has told Congress that Beijing operates more than 100 secret police stations abroad, including one in Manhattan, to monitor and intimidate diaspora communities, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and Falun Gong practitioners. 

Falun Gong spokesperson Erping Zhang rounds out the witness list, expected to address the decades-long persecution of the spiritual movement inside China.

The Dui Hua Foundation estimates that as of September 2024, more than 200 U.S. nationals are detained in China “under coercive measures” aimed at pressuring the American government, resolving commercial disputes in China, or compelling silence by family members critical of the Chinese Communist Party.  

Smith’s office said the hearing will consider how Congress and the administration can press for the release of those still detained, protect their families and advocates from retaliation, and impose consequences on officials responsible for the persecution.