“Hundreds” seems to be the most accurate count available of how many Americans are being detained in mainland China. Most of the names are not widely reported. Maybe about 200 Americans are detained or incarcerated, with another thirty to forty subject to exit bans that bar them from leaving the country.
In September 2024, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a body composed of 18 lawmakers from both chambers and five administration officials, observed that more Americans are detained in the PRC “than anywhere else in the world,” with many “jailed for over or nearly a decade.”
Li, Swidan, Leung
The CECC article mentioned the cases of Kai Li (shown above in a picture held by his son) and Mark Swidan, both at that time formally considered by the State Department to be “ ‘unjustly detained,’ affording them the diplomatic attention of the Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs.” Their status has now happily changed. They and John Leung were released in 2024 as part of an exchange of prisoners. The U.S. government did not name the three Chinese nationals turned over in the exchange, but reports eventually named Shanlin Jin, who had been imprisoned on child pornography charges; and Ji Chaoqun and Xu Yanjun, who had been imprisoned on espionage charges.
The problem with such prisoner swaps is that they give the Chinese government an incentive to detain Americans on bogus grounds in order to secure the release of Chinese nationals being detained for committing real crimes, including espionage for Red China.
In September 2025, U.S. representatives introduced legislation to push the U.S. government to use “diplomatic, legal, and economic tools to bring its citizens back home” and to counter the CCP tactic of “holding family members of American citizens as hostages to silence critics of the Chinese Communist Party.” Named after two of the Americans that China is holding, Nelson Wells Jr. and Dawn Michelle Hunt, the bill is currently in limbo.
Youlin Chen
Among the many being unjustly detained in China is Youlin Chen, a “Chinese-born American seismologist who has published U.S.-funded work on detecting North Korean nuclear tests.” Chen has been held for two years so far and may eventually be tried. The charge is spying. According to Reuters, “Secretary of State Marco Rubio on March 19 designated Chen, 54, as ‘wrongfully detained,’ making his release a top U.S. priority.”
“I believe they will convict him no matter what and the trial will be behind closed doors,” says his wife, Yufang Rong.
Min Zin
On June 3, 2026, a U.S. citizen named Min Zin, a doctoral candidate who writes about the politics of his home country of Myanmar, was arrested in China while on his way to a conference. Scholars at Risk Network: “On June 12, 2026, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said during a press briefing that Zin had been detained on suspicion of ‘engaging in espionage and endangering Chinese national security.’ Such detentions of U.S. citizens are rare in China.”
Not that rare.
Zin’s real sin is probably his prodemocracy views and exposure of CCP doings. World Politics Review reports (July 10, 2026):
He took part in Myanmar’s 1988 pro-democracy uprising as a high school student—a movement the military crushed with lethal force. The activism got him expelled from school. He spent years in hiding to avoid arrest, eventually crossing into Thailand in 1997. He made it to the United States, applied for asylum, and rebuilt his life.
More recently, Min Zin’s research covered civil-military relations, democratization and ethnic conflict—the standard portfolio of a political scientist specializing in Myanmar and Southeast Asia. His think tank, which was located in Myanmar during the country’s democratic opening, moved to Thailand after the 2021 military coup that ushered military rule back in.
But ISP-Myanmar also ran a dedicated China Desk, publishing detailed analyses of Chinese infrastructure investments in Myanmar and Beijing’s backing of the military government. That last part, along with his history of activism, is almost certainly what got him arrested. Not espionage, but scholarship that Beijing found inconvenient.
The governments of the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and Myanmar are all part of the same gang. If you’re known for doing work that opposes or reveals what they do, think thrice before going to China, even if you’ve traveled there many times before. It’s not particularly safe for anybody else to go to China either.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “Foreign Businesses to China: ‘Hurt me more!’ ”
StoptheCCP.org: “The Wells and Hunt Unjustly Detained in Communist China Act”
