AIR FORCE ONE: US President Donald Trump said on Friday (May 15) that he brought up the fate of imprisoned Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai during the high-stakes summit with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
Asked about the release of political prisoners by China, Trump told reporters on board Air Force One: “I did bring him up, it’s a tougher one for him, it’s a tougher one.”
Trump added: “He said, he told me, Jimmy Lai is a tough one for him to do.”
Lai, the 78-year-old founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, was found guilty in December on charges of foreign collusion and seditious publication and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The sentence was the harshest penalty doled out so far under a national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing after widespread pro-democracy protests in 2019, and received international condemnation.
Trump added on Friday that Xi promised “he’s going to strongly consider the pastor”, referring to Jin Mingri, the founder of a prominent Chinese underground church detained in October in a sweeping national crackdown.
Jin founded the unregistered Zion Church in 2007 in Beijing. It grew to 1,500 members before shuttering in 2018 under pressure from Chinese authorities.
But the church maintained an online presence that flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a following across 40 Chinese cities.
Jin was arrested on Oct 10 on “suspicion of the illegal use of information networks”.