FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Sept. 4, 2026
Event ID: P5-EVT-2026-0904-14
As preparations proceed for the expected Sept. 24 meeting between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping, including reporting that Xi plans to bring a substantial delegation of Chinese corporate executives, the Free China Movement (FCM) states that human rights should be visibly represented alongside trade and investment.
FCM supports inclusion of a dedicated human-rights delegation or substantive human-rights component alongside the business discussions, addressing political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, religious freedom, freedom of expression, rule of law and transnational repression.
FCM specifically highlights Dr. Wang Bingzhang (王炳章), who launched China Spring in New York in 1982, became a pioneering organizer of the modern overseas Chinese democracy movement, and joined the founding governance cohort of the Free China Movement in Washington in 1998. Wang was sentenced to life imprisonment in February 2003 and has spent more than twenty-three years under that sentence. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found his detention arbitrary.
FCM’s position is that Wang’s case, together with other verified long-held political-prisoner and prisoner-of-conscience cases, should be raised in the summit’s human-rights record. The presence of corporate executives demonstrates the importance attached to commerce; the summit should also demonstrate that people imprisoned following decades of advocacy for democracy and fundamental freedoms have not been forgotten.
Related News & Editorial: Xi’s Reported CEO Delegation Puts Trade at Center of Sept. 24 Washington Summit; FCM Says Human Rights Must Be on the Agenda
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