Chinese underground pastor Jin Mingri freed, arrives in US
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- Jin Mingri, founder of the Zion Church, was released from a Chinese prison and traveled to Los Angeles, with US-based rights group ChinaAid confirming his arrival in the US.
- Trump raised Jin's detention directly with Xi Jinping during a May state visit to Beijing, telling reporters afterward that Xi said he would "strongly consider" releasing the pastor.
- Jin's family thanked Trump and the Trump administration "for their tremendous leadership" and said they knew the release "could not have happened without the direct intervention from Xi Jinping."
- Zion Church grew from 20 members in 2007 to a network of roughly 10,000 people across 40 cities before being officially banned by the Chinese Communist Party in 2018 for refusing to install government security cameras at its Beijing property.
- The October 2025 raids that led to Jin's imprisonment detained 30 church leaders and were described by Christian groups as one of the strictest crackdowns on religious activity in China's modern history, with a follow-up crackdown in January detaining nine more people from another church.
- ChinaAid founder Bob Fu welcomed the release but noted that "countless" religious practitioners, including eight members of the Zion Church, remain incarcerated in China.
- The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group of Western lawmakers that includes dozens of UK MPs, said it was "overjoyed" with the news of Jin's release.
Why it matters: The release shows direct US-China presidential diplomacy can unlock individual religious freedom cases, yet eight Zion Church members and "countless" other practitioners remain jailed from the October crackdown — meaning the broader machinery of religious suppression is still fully operational even as one high-profile figure walks free.
