Ezra Jin’s Release Is a Victory Washington Can Replicate

In the early hours of July 3, 2026, Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri was pulled from his jail cell in southern China. He assumed he was being transferred to another prison. Only when he arrived at the airport did they hand him a fresh passport and inform him that his destination was America. Hours later, the founder of Beijing’s Zion Church landed in Los Angeles roughly 30 pounds lighter, his once salt-and-pepper hair mostly gray after 266 days in prison, and embraced his wife and children, whom he had not seen in eight years. 

Beijing did not release Jin as an act of mercy. It was a diplomatic transaction, one which conformed to a long-established pattern Beijing has adhered to for decades. 

While not an absolute rule, China generally releases prisoners of faith when four conditions align. 

First, the request is made through the executive branch and a particular individual is named. During President Donald Trump’s May visit to Beijing, he raised Jin’s case directly with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. 

Second, the ask is timed to a joint summit or other significant diplomatic occasion. Jin’s case preceded a summit where Beijing received institutionalized trade channels to discuss tariff reductions, signaling the potential for marginally warmer relations with Washington. 

Third, Beijing receives a face-saving exit that allows it to portray exiling the captive abroad as a “goodwill gesture” or another cynical excuse. 

Fourth and finally, the prisoner has an American connection. Jin’s wife and three children live in the United States. His daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, testified about her father’s case before Congress and campaigned for his release in American media.

When those four conditions align, China is far more likely to accede to American requests. 

In September 2024, Pastor David Lin, a U.S. citizen serving a bogus life sentence in China for “contract fraud” since 2006, was freed days after National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with Xi in Beijing. The Dui Hua Foundation, which tracks political prisoners in China, had raised Lin’s case with Beijing 28 times in the five years preceding his release, receiving just four responses yet still keeping Lin’s cause alive until a diplomatic window opened. 

The pattern predates Xi entirely. In 2005, Uyghur activist Rebiya Kadeer was released on “medical grounds” and flown to her family in the United States three days before Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Beijing—and Washington simultaneously dropped a UN human-rights resolution against China. 

Before Xi, Washington also saw isolated successes in the political prisoner realm. In 1997, Beijing paroled its most famous dissident, Wei Jingsheng, on “medical” grounds and put him on a plane to Detroit—weeks after Jiang Zemin’s Washington summit. In April 1998, it did the same to Tiananmen student leader Wang Dan, greasing the runway for Bill Clinton’s June visit. John Kamm, who founded Dui Hua, recalled Chinese officials in 1993 asking him which prisoner’s release would “make the front page in the United States,” then timing paroles to Clinton’s most-favored-nation trade decision. 

Yet, Washington has not always been successful in its advocacy for political and religious prisoners in China.

Pastor Wang Yi of Chengdu’s Early Rain Covenant Church is currently serving nine years for “inciting subversion.” His “Declaration of Faithful Disobedience” explicitly rejects the CCP’s authority in spiritual matters. His family also remains in China. Jimmy Lai, the Catholic Hong Kong media magnate and outspoken political dissident, was sentenced in 2026 to 20 years, the longest term yet delivered under Hong Kong’s national security law. When Trump raised him in the very same conversation that delivered Jin’s release, Xi called it “tough.” 

The reason is clear. These requests work when the prisoner can be released as a discretionary favor without appearing to concede too much on principle. Overt pressure calcifies Beijing when the case becomes a public referendum on Party sovereignty, as Wang Yi did explicitly, or symbolizes Hong Kong’s subjugation, as Lai’s case does. Jin threaded the needle: prominent enough to be worth a favor, but a pastor who wasn’t as publicly political with an American family and a summit conveniently at hand.

Learning from past successes and failures, Washington has a reliable playbook to free at least some Chinese prisoners.

First, the requests should be from high-level Americans to high-level Chinese. Prisoner releases of this kind are ultimately decided by the paramount leader in China, not by courts. Every summit, meeting, and call should carry a short, prioritized list raised with Xi directly. Second, synchronize the asks to transactional windows. Xi is slated to visit the United States this fall. Washington should pursue favorable results concerning prisoners, not just soybeans. Third, engineer face-saving exits—exile, medical parole, “humanitarian” framing—to let Beijing keep face while Washington keeps the prisoner. 

Fourth, put the harder cases—Wang Yi, Jimmy Lai—on a separate, patient track. While their freedom is worth pursuing, it will require sustained sanctions and other pressure on the United Front Work Department and the Public Security Bureau that lead China’s religious persecution—exactly as senators Roger Wicker and Tom Cotton have urged. The calculus in these cases is different. Beijing might relent if American pressure makes it more costly to prolong their imprisonment than to free them.

Finally, utilize Jin’s freedom as leverage in other similar cases. Eight Zion leaders remain imprisoned: pastors Yin Huibin, Gao Yingjia, Wang Lin, Liu Zhenbin, Lin Shucheng, and Wang Cong, Sister Wu Qiuyu and Elder Wang Zhong. The method that freed Jin can work for other prisoners if Washington has the discipline to implement it again, and again.

This track will not address the systemic religious freedom issues that pervade China. The Chinese Communist Party sees religion as something to be controlled, if not actively repressed. No leader-to-leader request can change that; only sustained pressure can. 

But it’s not a choice of one or the other. Securing Jin’s release is one of Trump’s biggest religious freedom wins in his second term. Washington sacrifices almost nothing when it pursues this route while Beijing sees it as the cherry on top of other negotiations rather than a leverage point. 

America must not relent on its broader religious freedom goals with China. But Jin being able to spend the Fourth of July with his family, finally free, is a victory America can repeat if it understands how to win.

Samuel Ben-Ur is a research analyst focusing on Christian persecution at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.