Trump-Xi summit: Will dissidents be part of the talks, like CEOs?
Trump’s long-awaited visit to Beijing, the first by a US president since 2017, offers an opportunity to refocus attention on the fate of Jimmy Lai and many other defenders of religious freedom and human rights imprisoned in China. This includes Zion Church clergymen, whose families, to keep their fate in the public eye, are posting on Chinese social media images of the Ichthys fish, a symbol used by early Christians during persecution.
Milan (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Donald Trump has just arrived in Beijing for the long-awaited summit with Xi Jinping, which begins tomorrow morning.
His delegation includes top executives from major US-based global companies, a clear sign of the primary objective of the meeting with the Chinese president, representing the giants of the now crucial microchip industry and large investment funds, as well as the CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla.
US media have even listed the number of zeros in these companies' total revenues, coming up with an enormous figure.
However, other voices around the world are trying to push other names onto the agenda of the first visit to China by a US president since 2017, like those of dissidents jailed in Hong Kong and mainland China for fighting for freedom.
The best known is Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong Catholic publisher AsiaNews has covered many times. Pushing 80, he is serving a 20-year prison sentence for supporting pro-democracy movements. A full-page ad calling for his release appeared in today’s Washington Post, but he is not alone.
Rev Bob Fu, the driving force behind China Aid, a US-based Evangelical group fighting for religious freedom in China, released an open letter on the eve of Trump’s trip, naming other, significant people.
First and foremost, we have Rev John Cao, who has spent seven years in prison for humanitarian work along the China-Myanmar border. Even though he served his sentence, he cannot travel to the United States with his wife and children.
Then there is Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer nicknamed the "conscience of China”, who has been missing for nearly nine years after he was seized and tortured by the authorities. His family, who are US citizens, continues to search for him.
Rev Bob Fu also cites the case of Dr Wang Bingzhang, 78, a permanent resident of the United States and Canada, considered a pioneer of the Chinese democracy movement abroad, who was kidnapped in 2002 in Vietnam and has been held in China for more than 24 years.
Another case is that of Zhang Zhan, a Christian activist and blogger known for documenting the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, who now faces a new four-year sentence for her journalistic activities after serving an earlier prison sentence.
Currently, the hottest issue among US Evangelicals is the Zion Church, which was the scene last October of the largest raid in recent years by Chinese authorities for its independent activities outside the Three-Self Movement, the Protestant equivalent of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
More than 200 days ago, a group of 18 pastors and faithful led by the Church’s founder, Rev Ezra Jin Mingri, were arrested for violating regulations on religious activities, particularly those requiring control of all religious material distributed online.
Recently, China Aid reported a new way devised by the families of Zion Church clergymen to raise awareness of the fate of their loved ones while getting around government bans, i.e. using the ichthys, the "fish symbol" adopted by early Christians to convey messages of peace and hope, whose Greek initials spell "Jesus, Christ, Son, Savior”, as a secret sign of mutual recognition.
“It is said that images of my father, Pastor Jin Mingri, have now been blocked within China,” a member of his family, currently living in the United States, is quoted as saying. Yet, for the latter, “in today’s challenging environment, this simple symbol carries a complete confession of faith and can serve as a silent connection and source of support among believers, even in times when words cannot be spoken openly.”
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13/10/2025 19:19
