Senior bipartisan US lawmakers have urged President Donald Trump to personally raise the cases of political prisoners and unjustly detained Americans with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their upcoming talks, warning that Beijing's actions threaten American interests and families. The appeal, made public on Monday, 12 May, comes ahead of anticipated high-level US-China engagements and marks a rare show of cross-party unity on human rights.

The Bipartisan Letter

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) released the letter signed by Senator Dan Sullivan, Representative Chris Smith, Senator Jeff Merkley, and Representative James McGovern. The commission accused the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of increasingly deploying "hostage diplomacy, coercive exit bans, and transnational repression" against US citizens, lawful permanent residents, and their relatives.

"The CCP is not only punishing an individual," the lawmakers wrote. "It is sending a message both at home and abroad that it can control the lives of people in China and reach into American families and influence conduct in the United States."

Four Cases Lawmakers Want Raised

The letter specifically asked Trump to raise four cases in all high-level engagements with Xi. These included Pastor Mingri "Ezra" Jin, described as "a Protestant pastor imprisoned for his religious leadership," whose family in the United States "has been threatened in an effort to stop them from raising his case with the White House and the Department of State."

Dr Gulshan Abbas, a Uyghur physician serving a 20-year sentence, was also highlighted. According to the letter, she was detained "in order to intimidate and silence her sister, who advocates here in the United States for Uyghur human rights." The other cases cited were Uyghur entrepreneur Ekpar Asat and Gao Zhen, a US lawful permanent resident accused over artwork created in the United States — whose US-citizen child "has been barred from returning to his home in New York City."

The lawmakers argued that raising individual cases publicly and privately would help protect Americans and increase pressure on Chinese authorities. "Raising political prisoner cases at the highest levels is a low-cost, high-return instrument that raises the price of repression," the letter stated.

Broader List of Detainees

An attached addendum named a wider group of detainees and activists, including Hong Kong democracy advocate Chow Hang-tung, Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan, Christian pastor Wang Yi, Tibetan monk Konchog Choedrag, and veteran Chinese commentator Dong Yuyu. The commission also urged the State Department to maintain a "regularly updated priority list" of political prisoner and exit-ban cases for senior-level diplomatic engagements with Chinese leaders.

Sanders on AI and US-China Talks

Separately on Monday, Senator Bernie Sanders welcomed reports of upcoming US-China talks on artificial intelligence between Trump and Xi. "The world is woefully unprepared for the threats posed by the rapid and uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence," Sanders said in a statement. He called on both leaders to ensure "humans, not machines, come first" and urged cooperation on AI safety, technical information-sharing, and progress towards "a treaty to ban superintelligence."

"At the height of the Cold War, Reagan and Gorbachev found a way to negotiate nuclear arms control," Sanders said. "The existential risk posed by AI demands nothing less from Trump and Xi."

Context: Human Rights as a Persistent Fault Line

Human rights concerns have remained a major point of friction in US-China relations for years, alongside disputes over trade, Taiwan, technology controls, and military activity in the Indo-Pacific. Washington has repeatedly accused Beijing of arbitrary detentions and repression in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong. The CECC, established by the US Congress in 2000, monitors human rights and rule-of-law developments in China; its annual reports and prisoner database are widely referenced by lawmakers, diplomats, and advocacy groups. This latest letter signals that regardless of trade or technology negotiations, a bipartisan bloc in Congress intends to keep individual detention cases on the diplomatic agenda.