Beijing: U.S. President Donald Trump poses for a picture with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a visit to the Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing, Friday, May 15, 2026. (Photo: Xinhua via IANS)
Washington, September 18 (IANS) US lawmakers have urged President Donald Trump to secure the release of Americans detained in China and restrict Beijing’s access to advanced artificial intelligence chips ahead of his scheduled meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week.
The separate demands came as Representative Ro Khanna announced a hearing on a proposed US-China AI safety agreement. His office said the September 23 hearing would take place a day before the leaders’ scheduled White House meeting.
On September 17, Senators Edward Markey and Ted Budd introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning what they described as China’s repeated arbitrary or wrongful detention of American academics. Senators John Curtis and Adam Schiff joined the measure.
Representatives Stephen Lynch and John Moolenaar led a companion resolution in the House. The lawmakers sought priority for the safe return of Massachusetts academic Youlin Chen and American scholar Min Zin.
“President Trump must use his upcoming meeting with President Xi to demand that China release every unlawfully detained American,” Lynch said.
The Senate resolution urges the secretary of state to use all available tools to negotiate their release. It calls for raising the China travel advisory from Level 2 to Level 3, which advises Americans to reconsider travel.
It also proposes considering a wrongful-detention indicator in the advisory and reviewing the criteria for designating a country as a state sponsor of wrongful detention. The measure supports Trump’s efforts to raise the two cases with Beijing.
Separately, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer urged Trump to block China’s access to America’s most advanced AI chips and manufacturing equipment.
“Before Trump meets with Xi Jinping next week, he needs to draw a line in the sand and say that blocking the Chinese Communist Party’s access to our cutting-edge AI technology is non-negotiable,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
He said a bipartisan group had introduced legislation as part of the National Defense Authorization Act to restrict chip sales. He accused Trump of obstructing those efforts.
Schumer also argued that restrictions on technology transfers could accompany domestic safeguards against AI risks. Maintaining American leadership and limiting those risks were compatible goals, he said.
Khanna, the senior Democrat on the House select committee on China, focused on international cooperation over AI safety.
“We urgently need an agreement with China on basic inspections and safety standards,” he said.
His virtual hearing will examine risks including loss of human control over AI and systems acting against human intentions. Scheduled witnesses include Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton and retired US Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan.
Khanna said OpenAI and Anthropic had not committed to testifying despite repeated requests. He also wrote to Chinese companies Moonshot AI, Alibaba and DeepSeek, seeking commitments to a binding agreement with American AI laboratories. His office said such an agreement must be enforceable and verifiable.
The supplied statements contained no responses from the White House, the Chinese government or the AI companies.
Chen, a US citizen who conducted seismological research with Chinese academics, was arrested on November 5, 2024, according to the resolution. It says he has been held for more than 600 days without trial or family access on espionage charges the sponsors describe as baseless. He was denied a lawyer for the first 434 days.
Min Zin, a US citizen heading a Myanmar-focused policy think tank, was detained at Kunming Changshui International Airport on June 3, 2026, according to the resolution. He had been invited to an academic event at a university in Yunnan province.
