Dozens of national security experts have submitted a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to directly address religious persecution in China during his upcoming summit in Beijing.
The letter, drafted by the Vandenberg Coalition and submitted to Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday, encouraged Trump to confront the “significant amount of religious persecution in China perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party” under the leadership of paramount leader Xi Jinping during next month’s meeting.
“Make clear that the United States expects China to end its religious persecution against people of all faiths, and that the United States is prepared to issue sanctions and visa bans targeting specific Chinese officials responsible for religious persecution,” the group urged in the letter.
Among the signers of the letter are members of Trump’s first administration, including former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie and former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger.
The People’s Republic of China is an atheistic state with virtually zero real protections for the practice of organized religion. Churches and other faith congregations that wish to hold regular services are required to register with the government and to accept ideological imperatives handed down from Beijing.
Those who practice an unapproved religion or refuse to comply with the CCP’s directives on acceptable tenets of belief risk arrest and imprisonment. The CCP has even passed legal directives stating the rebirth of “living Buddhas” must “comply with Chinese laws and regulations.”
Trump’s administration declared in early 2021 that the Chinese government was committing a genocide against Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province, with crimes against humanity including torture, imprisonment, forced labor, and forced sterilization.
The national security experts praised Trump in their letter for having “courageously issued [that] determination” during his first term — but they pushed the president to go further.
Specifically, the group is asking Trump to demand that persecuted pastor “Ezra” Jin Mingri be “released from prison and allowed to leave China.”
Jin is a Protestant preacher who founded Beijing Zion Church in 2007. The burgeoning Christian community operated with relative independence for years and amassed hundreds of parishioners with little interference from authorities.
But the CCP cracked down on Zion Church last year, and Jin — along with dozens of other faith leaders — was detained at home and now faces charges of “illegal dissemination of religious content via the internet.”
Jin has a daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, who is currently living in the United States and is expecting a child later this year.
The national security experts told Trump that “securing Pastor Jin’s release in time for the birth of his grandchild would be an impressive win that aligns with your administration’s laudable emphasis on protecting Christians from persecution.”
Trump is slated to meet with Xi on May 14-15. The visit was originally scheduled for late March but was postponed due to the conflict in Iran.
Human rights advocates have also requested that Trump press Xi for the release of Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai, a 78-year-old Catholic newspaper publisher who has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for opposing the CCP’s governance of the region.
The president said late last year that he had “put that request out” in conversations with Xi but will have to “see what happens.”