Human rights advocate: Trump must not give up on freeing Jimmy Lai

President Donald Trump should continue pressing Chinese leader Xi Jinping to release Jimmy Lai, the imprisoned Catholic media entrepreneur and Hong Kong pro-democracy advocate, human rights commentator Nina Shea argued in a July 24 piece published by the National Review. 

Shea said Trump raised Lai’s case during a May meeting with Xi, along with the case of Chinese evangelical pastor Ezra Jin. Chinese authorities later released Jin and allowed him to travel to the U.S., but Lai remains imprisoned in Hong Kong. 

Shea suggested Xi may have released Jin in hopes of easing pressure from American evangelical Christians while continuing a broader crackdown on underground churches.

“Xi likely saw a political advantage in choosing the pastor for release,” Shea wrote. “He is hoping it will induce complacency among American evangelicals at a time when China is cracking down on the Christian underground.”

As Zeale News previously reported, Lai, the founder of the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily in Hong Kong, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February. His family has described the punishment as a de facto life sentence because of the 78-year-old’s declining health. Lai’s case has drawn national attention, with lawmakers from both parties calling for his release and Trump pledging to raise the case with Xi. 

After his May summit with Xi, Trump told journalists that Xi indicated Lai’s case would be “a tough one.” Shea argued that Xi’s response should not deter Trump from continuing to press for Lai’s freedom.

“The two heads of state are to meet again in September, in Washington, giving the president another shot at freeing Lai,” Shea, who is the director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, wrote.

She pointed to Jin’s release as evidence that Trump’s direct intervention with Xi can yield results. 

Jin, the founding pastor of China’s large evangelical Zion Church, had been detained since October 2025 on allegations of “illegal business operations,” which Shea said apparently arose from the church’s posting of religious sermons online. 

Following Trump’s May meeting with Xi, the President told reporters that Xi was “giving very serious consideration” to releasing the pastor.

According to Shea, Xi ordered Chinese authorities on July 3 to release Jin and put him on a flight to Los Angeles. Jin initially believed he was being transferred to another detention site, but a U.S. consular official aboard the plane informed him that he would be free upon landing. 

Jin arrived in Los Angeles on July 4 and reunited with his wife, Anna Liu, and other family members, Shea wrote. 

Shea argued that Jin and Lai share important similarities as prominent Christian figures who challenged the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to control religious and civic life.

Jin resisted government demands to incorporate Zion Church into the state-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the officially sanctioned Protestant organization through which the CCP oversees churches in China, Shea wrote. Zion’s network grew to include thousands of Christians in roughly 40 cities before authorities confiscated its properties in 2018 after Jin refused to install facial recognition cameras inside the church.

Lai, meanwhile, used his media company and public platform to peacefully and selflessly defend democracy and political freedom in Hong Kong, according to Shea. She also highlighted Lai’s Catholic faith and said he helped fund the rebuilding of Catholic churches in mainland China that had been desecrated or destroyed during the rule of Mao Zedong.

“By placing God above all, and prioritizing biblical teachings over the sayings of Mao and Xi, both defied the CCP’s goal to monopolize ideology in China,” Shea wrote.

The supposed distinction between the two cases, she noted, is that Hong Kong had already convicted Lai under its national security law, while Chinese authorities released Jin before he went to trial. Xi has effectively suggested, she wrote, that Hong Kong’s separate governing system and ostensibly independent judiciary prevented him from intervening in Lai’s case.

But Shea rejected that explanation, arguing that Xi designed and imposed the national security law to strengthen the CCP’s control over Hong Kong and suppress political dissent.

“The notion that he lacks the power to pardon Lai is laughable — he himself consolidated these powers,” she wrote.

She also challenged the idea that Jin was less threatening to the Chinese government because he avoided political activism. She cited reports estimating that Chinese authorities have arrested more than 10,000 Christians during the past decade and described broader government efforts to close churches, restrict children’s participation in religious services, and rewrite the Bible.

The CCP spent a year planning Jin’s arrest and detained 27 other Zion Church leaders, eight of whom are still imprisoned, according to information Jin’s daughter provided to Shea. 

Shea concluded that Trump should use his next meeting with Xi to renew his appeal for Lai’s release rather than accept the Chinese leader’s claim that the case is beyond his control.

“Determining who is imprisoned and who goes free is all part of a day’s work for the CCP secretary general,” she wrote. “And rescuing China’s persecuted is undoubtedly important to American interests.”

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