Responding to an inquiry about the more than two hundred Americans unjustly detained in the People’s Republic of China, Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu declares that “China is a country governed by the rule of law and consistently safeguards the safety and lawful rights and interests of foreigners in China in accordance with the law. At the same time, all foreign nationals in or entering China must abide by Chinese laws, and those who violate the law will be held accountable.”
In its dishonesty, this statement is itself a manifestation of China’s indifference to the rights and interests of foreigners.
Rule of law
There are laws in the People’s Republic of China, plenty, but no meaningful approach to or approximation of “rule of law” there, no “principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated,” governance that in practice includes “measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness, and procedural and legal transparency.”
“Law” in the People’s Republic of China is whatever the Chinese Communist Party says it is. There is no due process it need abide by and no independent judicial system. When Liu talks about governance “in accordance with the rule of law,” this means “in accordance with the arbitrary dictates of the CCP” or its minions.
The more than two hundred Americans unjustly detained in China include Nelson Wells Jr. and Dawn Michelle Hunt, “each of whom has been locked up in Chinese prisons for over a decade.”
Congressman Chris Smith has introduced legislation, the Nelson Wells Jr. and Dawn Michelle Hunt Unjustly Detained in Communist China Act, “calling for more stringent government oversight of detained Americans…and holding officials within the People’s Republic of China responsible for ‘wrongful detention’ ” (Newsweek, September 20, 2025).
As of September 22, 2025, Congress.gov has not yet published the text of the bill. But Smith reports a few details in a recent press release, which describes the purpose of the legislation as “mandating a coordinated U.S. government response to the unjust imprisonment of American citizens in China.”
A serious failing
Peter Humphrey, a former prisoner in China who advises the families of imprisoned Americans, and the families themselves regard the bill—including its publicizing of the names of Wells and Hunt—as a big step forward. But he does see a flaw in the legislation as he knows it: an attempt to distinguish a category of possibly “justly detained” Americans.
Humphrey says that “as someone who’s been deeply involved in this topic area for the last 10 years, and also was a victim of wrongful imprisonment myself along with my wife, I see that as a serious failing. Because we know very well there is no such thing as a fair and transparent trial in China. We know that it is a flawed judicial system, which we cannot really call the rule of law.
“We know these things. So, we need to consider every single American who is detained in China, and has been in the past detained in China, as unjustly detained.”
Also see:
Financial Times: “ ‘I was locked inside a steel cage’: Peter Humphrey on his life inside a Chinese prison”
“This ‘detention centre’ was once one of China’s notorious—and supposedly now abolished—’education through labour’ prisons for miscreants in the Communist Party–ruled dictatorship. Today, they pretend to be custody centres but they are still punishment centres. Untried prisoners are condemned from day one, starting with the dire conditions they face when they arrive. The aim is to isolate, crush the spirit, break the will. Many crumble quickly.”
