Trump should press Xi on China’s persecution of believers at home

The timing of Pastor Ezra Jin's release is worth a second look. He walks out of a Chinese prison just as Xi Jinping prepares to visit Washington, and we're supposed to treat that as a happy coincidence. It isn't. The Chinese Communist Party knows exactly what it's doing. Releasing one prominent believer is a cheap insurance policy against awkward questions during a high-profile summit. It also does nothing to dismantle the machinery that put Jin in prison in the first place.

That machinery is vast and efficient. China isn't just inconveniencing Christians in remote villages; it's running forced re-education camps in Xinjiang aimed at Uyghur Muslims, and it's systematically crushing unregistered Protestant and Catholic congregations across the country. Pastors are detained, church properties are seized, and believers are pressured to inform on each other. Jin's case was only notable because he had high-profile advocates pushing for him. For every Jin making headlines, there are hundreds of faithful people sitting in detention who don't have a U.S. senator tweeting about their plight.

This is the moment for President Trump to press Xi hard on the full scope of this persecution, not just accept a symbolic gesture and move on to trade talks. The president has shown he's willing to use leverage with Beijing and get results, and this is a case where a private but firm demand could make a real difference. We shouldn't let the optics of one released pastor distract from the ongoing reality that China's religious crackdown remains a persistent stain on its global rise.

So before the red carpet is rolled out, the message from our president should be simple: a single release is not a policy change, and America won't pretend otherwise. Xi needs to know that friendlier relations come with expectations — not just about trade imbalances, but about the basic human dignity of believers behind bars. That's not meddling in another country's affairs; it's holding a world power accountable to standards it claims to respect.