Us Demands China Release ‘wrongfully Detained’ American Held On Spying Charges

The State Department has accused China of wrongfully detaining a U.S. citizen on spying charges and called for his release Thursday.

The detained scholar, Min Zin, traveled to Yunnan Province, which borders Myanmar, in June to attend an academic conference at the invitation of the Chinese government, the department said in a statement.

“We call on Beijing to release all U.S. citizens arbitrarily detained or exit banned in China,” Dylan Johnson, the assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said on social media. “The safety and security of U.S. citizens is the State Department's top priority.”

The designation comes about a month before President Donald Trump will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington on Sept. 24. The meeting is the second in four months between the two leaders, following a high-profile summit in Beijing where they discussed trade, a major arms sale to Taiwan and the war in Iran. The designation also comes as America’s allies in Asia scramble to reevaluate their reliance on the U.S. for defense as Trump substantially scales back joint military exercises with South Korea, and announced he will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this year.

Zin is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, according to the Institute for Strategy and Policy in Myanmar, a think tank he founded in 2016. His studies focus on democratization as a former student activist in Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement in 1988, according to the think tank.

The Institute for Strategy and Policy said in a statement on Thursday that it welcomed the department’s designation of Zin as having been wrongfully detained. “We humbly ask that the US government continues to keep Min Zin’s case as a top priority, particularly ahead of President Xi’s visit to meet with President Trump next month, and that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) facilitate his immediate and unconditional release,” the think tank said.

The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zin is one of two wrongfully detained U.S. citizens in China, according to the department. The other, Youlin Chen, is a seismologist who was detained in China in 2024. In a July statement, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, called on China to release Chen immediately and drop its “baseless allegations.”

“The Chinese Communist Party's wrongful detention of Dr. Youlin Chen is a stark reminder that academic engagement with China carries risks that extend far beyond the theft of intellectual property and research,” he said.