Wives of Americans wrongfully detained in China look ahead to Trump-Xi meeting
Wives of Americans wrongfully detained in China appeal for their husbands’ release ahead of a high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Gillian Turner reports on the families of Youlin Chen and Min Zin as they share their emotional struggles and express hope for diplomatic intervention during bilateral discussions.
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President Donald Trump plans to ask Chinese President Xi Jinping to release wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Dr. Youlin Chen, the man’s family told Fox News after his wife and the wife of another wrongful detainee spoke exclusively to Fox & Friends Wednesday.
The wives of two wrongfully detained Americans in China made a plea for Trump to intervene in their husbands’ detention during an interview with Fox News Senior Foreign Correspondent Gillian Turner.
Yugang Rong and Sylvia Zin implored Trump to intervene in the cases of their husbands; Dr. Chen, a seismic and nuclear researcher, and Min Zin, a scholar with a focus on Myanmar, respectively. The pair are the only two U.S. citizens in China that have been designated by the U.S. State Department as wrongfully detained.
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“My husband is an American citizen. He is the father of my son and we terribly miss him,” Rong told Turner.
Chen was taken from outside the Beijing airport by Chinese agents in November 2024, according to a website dedicated to his release.
A headshot of Dr. Youlin Chen, courtesy of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation. (James W. Foley Legacy Foundation.)
After Chinese agents took him, they reportedly seized his cell phone, iPad, laptop and cameras and repeatedly logged onto his email accounts and accessed his devices.
His wife believes he was taken because of his seismic research into nuclear activity.
“It’s his research work. He has been doing a lot of research on how to monitor nuclear tests,” she told Fox & Friends.
His research, according to the website, “focuses on the Earth’s crustal structures in Asia using regional earthquake data, including data sourced from and in collaboration with earthquake scientists in China.”
In one of his publicly available reports he used geophysical research methods to detect North Korean nuclear tests.
A Japanese news broadcast of a test launch of new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) “Hwasong-19” at an undisclosed place in North Korea. North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on November 1 that it successfully test-fired the new Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) the previous day, with its leader Kim Jong Un saying the country has secured an “irreversible” status of developing delivery means of nuclear weapons. North Korea said the Hwasong-19 traversed 1,001.2 kilometers at a maximum altitude of 7,687.5 kilometers and flew for 5,156 seconds. (Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
China charged Chen with espionage, but he has yet to receive a trial despite over two years of imprisonment. He has not been allowed any contact with his family.
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Sylvia Zin, meanwhile, does not understand why her husband, whose research focuses on military government and Chinese-Myanmar relations, was taken.
“Unlike Dr. Chen, I really have no idea why, what in his research that they would be interested in. He is an open source researcher, and all of his work is published on their website,” Zin told Turner.
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Headshot of Min Zin. Photo courtesy of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation. (James W. Foley Legacy Foundation.)
Both women made a plea to the president to intervene.
“At this point, I think the president is the only person who can move ahead in this case and bring him home,” Zin said.
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Zin also said she was hopeful that Trump would bring her husband home.
“President Trump has done a lot for us. He has personally been involved in this case. I know whenever he [gets] personally involved in cases, Americans come home,” Rong said.
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The Trump administration has succeeded in securing the freedom of 83 U.S. nationals detained abroad in the past year, according to a report from the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation.
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Fox News’ Gillian Turner contributed to this report.