Tomorrow President Trump meets with China's leader President Xi Jinping who arrives today on a state visit to Washington. Last week, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a press release that reads in part:
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has reported for years that China’s violations of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) have been too numerous to count and too heinous to ignore. USCIRF asks President Donald J. Trump to directly raise with President Xi Jinping China’s systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of FoRB during the U.S.-China summit in Washington, D.C. on September 24, 2026....
Sam Brownback who was ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom from 2018-2021 and who is now co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit published an op-ed on Fox News similarly urging the President to raise religious freedom issued with President XI. Brownbacck said in part:
The CCP is increasingly waging a campaign of harassment, disinformation and lawfare — called transnational repression — against religious and political dissidents in the United States. Falun Gong practitioners alone have suffered nearly 300 bomb and death threats. Not to mention the persecution of them still raging within China itself....
Just days ago, Anthropic reported disrupting China-based intelligence operations using its Claude AI platform to build surveillance dossiers on overseas dissidents and Tibetan Buddhist, Falun Gong, Christian and Uyghur communities, including the U.S....
Americans will not accept Beijing’s meddling when it follows people across borders and tries to stifle, silence or punish them for choosing both faith and freedom.
When Xi arrives in Washington, President Trump should make that clear.
