It didn’t happen during the meeting in Busan in October 2025. The reporting at that time indicated that Donald Trump asked Xi Jinping to release Jimmy Lai, the former publisher of the pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, and then let the matter drop. “Now U.S. lawmakers want action at China summit,” The Washington Post reports (May 7, 2026).
In a letter Thursday, more than 100 lawmakers asked Trump to raise Lai’s case with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week and ask for his freedom. Trump pledged during his 2024 campaign to secure the release of Lai, a British citizen who has become a symbol of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, but has yet to do so.
“Your direct engagement is critical to securing Mr. Lai’s immediate release on humanitarian parole, so he can receive appropriate medical care and reunite with his family,” the lawmakers wrote in the Republican-led letter, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post.
The letter was signed by 68 senators, including more than 40 Republicans. It was also signed by more than 35 House members, including more than 25 Republicans. Among the signatories were Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), as well as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California)….
The Trump administration brokered an agreement in September for the release of an Atlanta-based Wells Fargo executive who was held in China for several months under an exit ban. But Lai’s case represents a more challenging task. Overturning the conviction of the ailing media tycoon would mark a major concession by Beijing, which has long defended its crackdown in Hong Kong as necessary for stability.
Already imprisoned for five years, Lai was recently sentenced to a couple more decades of incarceration. This amounts to a life sentence for the 78-year-old.
During the coming meeting in Beijing, if the U.S. president does press hard for the release of Jimmy Lai, Xi Jinping might dig in his heels. What if Trump doesn’t back down? Lei of Lei’s Real Talk suggests that Xi desperately needs Trump to come to Beijing and make some kind of deal in order to bolster what Lei and other CCP observers see as the dictator’s increasingly challenged and shaky hold on power.
President Trump is also being urged to urge Xi to release others with ties to the West.
Olivia Enos writes that it would be “a huge win for America” if Trump could secure the release “of several high-profile political prisoners, including Jimmy Lai, Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas, and Chinese Christian Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, as well as others…. Abbas…has 24 American family members who desire to see her freed and reunited with her family in the U.S. And Pastor Jin has an American citizen daughter and two sons who want nothing more than to be reunited with their Dad.”
Also see:
Daily Signal: “Congressman Asks Trump to Press China to Release Prisoners” (March 19, 2026)
