Trump-Xi talks yield no progress on Jimmy Lai

Bipartisan pressure from Congress did not produce any public sign of progress on Chinese prisoner cases during President Donald Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping, according to post-summit reporting. Trump said afterward that Xi viewed Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai as “a tough one for him to do,” signaling the talks ended without movement on the best-known case.

Congress wanted a clear answer before the two presidents left the room.

Lawmakers got a formal record of pressure but no diplomatic result. On the eve of the meeting, the House approved H. Res. 1259 urging Beijing to release political prisoners by a 414-0 vote, and the Senate cleared the same message by unanimous consent. Separately, senators led by Dick Durbin and Ted Cruz urged Trump to raise the cases directly with Xi. Durbin said in the Senate announcement, “I urge President Trump to raise their cases with Chinese President Xi Jinping.”

House lawmakers pressed the same point. Rep. Chris Smith’s office said 105 members of Congress signed a May 7 letter asking Trump to raise Lai’s case and the cases of other political prisoners during the summit. Smith said Lai has been jailed since 2020 and faces a 20-year sentence in Hong Kong. The letter gave the White House a written, cross-party request days before the meeting and made Lai the central name in Congress’s pre-summit campaign.

Trump did not announce any agreement on Lai or other detainees after his talks with Xi. Instead, according to The National News Desk report, he recounted Xi’s position in narrow terms, saying the Chinese leader had described Lai as “a tough one for him to do.” The remark was the clearest public sign of how the issue was handled and pointed to resistance from Beijing.

What lawmakers asked

The House and Senate resolutions aimed to turn a broad human-rights concern into a specific summit test. Smith’s office said both chambers passed identical language urging China to free political prisoners, while the Durbin-Cruz effort framed the matter as an issue Trump should put directly to Xi in the room. Lawmakers wanted the ask made before the two presidents parted, not left for lower-level follow-up.

Beijing has not softened its public stance on Lai. The same post-summit report cited Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun as saying, “Lai Chee-ying is the principal mastermind and perpetrator behind the riots that shook Hong Kong.” The statement offered no sign that the summit had changed the official Chinese view.

For lawmakers who spent the week building bipartisan pressure, the issue remains where it started: on the agenda, without visible movement. The House letter backed by 105 members, the 414-0 House vote and the Senate resolution led by Durbin and Cruz now stand as a record that Congress pressed Trump publicly before the meeting. That bipartisan paper trail leaves the administration exposed to renewed questions if future contacts with Beijing pass without any movement on Lai.