ع
Sylvia Zin told a congressional hearing that she remains deeply hopeful President Donald Trump will raise her husband’s detention during next week’s summit with Xi Jinping, citing the president’s past success in securing the freedom of other Americans held abroad. Zin, whose husband U Min Zin has been imprisoned in China for more than three months, described herself as reassured by Trump’s record on such cases during her appearance before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. The Associated Press reported that Zin expressed shock upon learning of the charges against her 53-year-old husband, whose academic work consists of open-source research on Myanmar politics that she said supports independent scholarship.
U Min Zin, a University of California-Berkeley scholar and executive director of the ISP-Myanmar think tank, traveled to the Chinese city of Kunming in early June for an academic conference when Chinese state security detained him on suspicion of endangering national security, according to details shared by his wife with lawmakers. A Reuters dispatch from July noted that a separate case involving US seismologist Youlin Chen, who has studied North Korean nuclear tests, has seen the scholar held for nearly two years on espionage charges that could carry severe penalties including life imprisonment. Chen’s wife, Yufang Rong, told Reuters that Trump had raised that matter with Xi during a May visit to Beijing, though no progress had emerged by midsummer.
The White House has stated that Trump seeks the return of every American detained overseas, a position that aligns with the designation of both Min Zin and Chen as wrongfully detained by the State Department, according to an Associated Press account of the hearing. Zin specifically voiced confidence that Trump could also help free Chen, linking the cases as priorities for high-level diplomacy between Washington and Beijing. The hearing also featured testimony from Sebastien Lai, son of Hong Kong media figure Jimmy Lai, who similarly called for his father’s release from a 20-year prison term imposed under national security legislation, as covered by multiple outlets including Newsweek.
Trump previously discussed Jimmy Lai’s imprisonment with Xi in May and quoted the Chinese leader describing it as a difficult matter, according to remarks the president made to reporters at the time. That exchange occurred during the same Beijing visit in which Trump raised the pastor Ezra Jin Mingri case, leading to the clergyman’s release and return to the United States in July after 266 days in custody, a sequence detailed in a Newsweek report on related detentions. The pattern of leveraging direct leader-to-leader talks has encouraged families of those still held, with Zin telling the panel that such engagement offers the clearest path forward.
Advocacy groups and US lawmakers have long pressed for attention to these cases amid broader tensions in US-China relations, including a Senate resolution from earlier this year that urged prioritization of several detainees during any engagement with Xi, congressional records show. The resolution highlighted concerns over arrests tied to religious expression, speech or family connections, noting that such actions have drawn international condemnation from human rights organizations. Data compiled by the Dui Hua Foundation, a humanitarian group tracking Chinese prisoners, has estimated that more than 200 Americans face various coercive measures in China, though only a small number receive the formal wrongfully detained label that triggers dedicated State Department efforts.
Zin emphasized her husband’s dedication to academic freedom and called on Trump to act swiftly so that Min Zin and others can reunite with their families, according to the testimony summarized by the Britannica news service. The upcoming summit, set for late September, marks the third meeting between the two leaders this year following sessions in Busan and Beijing, providing another opportunity for progress on humanitarian issues, as noted in reporting by The Irrawaddy and other regional outlets. No immediate response from Chinese officials to the latest appeal had been reported as of Wednesday.
