{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415870", "The Washington Stand article featuring Smith's commentary'Advocates, Lawmakers Press Trump to Uphold Prisoners of Faith, Conscience during Xi Visit'", "2026-09-22", "2026", "2026-09", "Republican", "House", "NJ", "Christopher H. Smith", "S000522", "chrissmith.house.gov", "chrissmith", "https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx", "scraper", "By Dan Hart\n\nPublished September 22, 2026\n\nWith President Trump set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday as part of a state visit to Washington, human rights advocates and lawmakers are urging the commander in chief to champion the cause of Christians and other citizens who are imprisoned in China simply for practicing their faith or for advocating for freedom.\n\nA large-scale crackdown on non-government approved churches is being carried out by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the past year. Last October, almost two dozen pastors and other workers from a single church called Zion Church were arrested, including founder and head pastor Ezra Jin. But in July, the power of personal advocacy was put on display as Xi\u2019s communist regime released Jin following a personal appeal to Xi from Trump in May for Jin\u2019s release.\n\nNow, human rights advocates such as Voice of the Martyrs\u2019 Todd Nettleton are highlighting the plight of other imprisoned pastors such as John Cao. As detailed by Family Research Council\u2019s Bob Fu, Cao \u201cspent seven years in a Chinese prison for conducting humanitarian work along the China-Myanmar border,\u201d but even two years after completing his sentence, he is still being prevented from reuniting with his family in the U.S. by the CCP. Others are urging Trump to fulfill a promise to secure the freedom of Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong media mogul and champion of democracy.\n\nAs Fu catalogs, the list of the wrongfully imprisoned in China goes on and on: Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer; Dr. Wang Bingzhang, a leader of the overseas Chinese democracy movement who was kidnapped by CCP agents in Vietnam; Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist who exposed the truth about COVID-19. Then there are the eight pastors and members of Ezra Jin\u2019s Zion Church who remain imprisoned, as well as Elder Li Yingqiang, Pastor Yang Rongli of Golden Lampstand Church, and Pastor Wang Yi of Early Rain Covenant Church. These Christians are imprisoned simply for refusing to surrender the authority of their churches to the Communist Party, Fu notes.\n\nLawmakers like Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who serves as co-chair of the Congressional Executive Commission on China, say that advocating on behalf of Christians and other prisoners of conscience is especially important now as persecution by the CCP \u201cis getting far worse.\u201d\n\n\u201c[T]he reason why Ezra Jin\u2019s church got targeted [is because] they refused to allow surveillance cameras into their churches,\u201d he pointed out during \u201cWashington Watch with Tony Perkins\u201d Monday. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those things where the Communist Party is ubiquitous, they want to be everywhere. And for the slightest perceived infraction, they will then arrest pastors and horribly mistreat them. So this is the time for the United States, I believe, and every freedom loving country to pivot and say, \u2018Religious freedom matters.\u2019 Human rights are at the core of our relationship and should be with a dictatorship like China. Raise it and make it stick. Link it to other things, including trade.\u201d\n\nSmith went on to emphasize that for Christians, advocating for those in prison is a direct command from God.\n\n\u201cOur Lord said, \u2018did you visit me when I was in prison\u2019 in Matthew 25? \u2018How about when you had the opportunity? Did you try to get me out of prison?\u2019\u201d he underscored. \u201cI\u2019ve met so many wonderful pastors and people over the years, including in the Soviet Union going back to 1981. My first trip there was in \u201982 on behalf of religious freedom. \u2026 Ronald Reagan always raised religious freedom. He always had a list of people that he was asking \u2014 in this case, the Russian or Soviet leadership \u2014 to allow to go free. And we need to persist and tell this dictatorship, \u2018This is a priority. [If] you want other things, [if] you want more trade, \u2026 well, this is the linchpin. This opens up the door.\u201d\n\nSmith further stressed how critical the stakes are for those caught in the CCP\u2019s brutal prison system. \u201cIf you\u2019re arrested in China, political or religious prisoner, you\u2019re almost always going to be tortured, and I mean horribly tortured. I had a number of hearings on what the Chinese government actually does to people, and you can\u2019t even repeat some of it [because] it is so, so horrific. And that leaves scars on that individual, the likes of which we can\u2019t even fathom. So I would ask all of us to be praying.\u201d\n\nSmith, who serves as a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and as co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, recalled what Wei Jingsheng, a father of China\u2019s democracy movement, once told him about how powerful the West\u2019s advocacy efforts are for those in China\u2019s prisons.\n\n\u201c[H]e told me something I will never forget. He said, \u2018When you Americans and the West kowtow and try to be all nicey-nice with these dictators, they beat us more in prison.\u2019 He said, \u2018When you are tough, when you are well-founded in your knowledge about what\u2019s going on, and you\u2019re able to present a case and do so right from the heart, but also filled with facts, they beat us less and it effectuates the freedom of people from these gulags.\u2019 So it\u2019s it works. But we have to be serious. \u2026 [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio, who used to chair the China Commission \u2026 he knows this like the back of his hand. He should be raising it.\u201d\n\nSmith additionally detailed how decades of pro-China trade policies by the U.S. has undercut America\u2019s ability to effectively fight against the CCP\u2019s human rights abuses.\n\n\u201c[I]n 2005 [and] 2006 \u2026 Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo were conveying all of this technology to the Chinese Communist Party to surveil their own people to limit what can be searched on a Google search engine, for example, in China,\u201d he explained. \u201c\u2026 [O]ur technology has seriously enabled their public security police, their military, their command and control, and then the entirety of their weapons systems to be state of the art. I fault our Big Business for that. \u2026 Bill Clinton was the worst of all when it came to conveying all of that. [He] lost China on human rights for the purposes of trade, and that means technology transfers that have dual use that are military. We gave them the store, and we wonder why we\u2019re now worried about a potential conflict vis \u00e0 vis Taiwan and beyond.\u201d\n\nThe congressman also pointed out that the measures that the U.S. has taken to combat illicitly-made Chinese goods ending up in the U.S. have not been effective, which has further hampered human rights.\n\n\u201cBill Clinton had a memorandum of understanding on enforcement of the Smoot-Hawley Act [which says] we can\u2019t import gulag-made goods. And it wasn\u2019t worth the paper it was printed [on]. I went over to China and I said to our people in our embassy, \u2018How do you enforce this? You can\u2019t get to the factories where they\u2019re making these things. There\u2019s no on-site inspection. They don\u2019t allow unfettered access.\u2019 \u2026 So all these things are being produced by forced labor, including child labor [and it] ends up in our department stores.\u201d", 1, "2026-09-25T10:04:52Z", "2026-09-25T10:05:46Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415870"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6683701649308205, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}