Bringing American Hostage Home Is ‘Top Priority’ for Trump-Xi Summit, White House Tells Wife

The White House has assured the wife of Min Zin, an American scholar being held hostage in China, that her husband’s release is a “top priority” for Thursday’s Trump-Xi Summit, Sylvia Zin told the Daily Signal in an interview.

“I had a meeting with the [National Security Council] yesterday, and they have reassured me that this is a top priority for the U.S. government and will be on the agenda for the summit with Xi,” she said.

Min Zin, a husband and father of one, traveled to China for an academic conference on June 3. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs now claims he is a danger to “national security.” The U.S. State Department has designated his detention as wrongful.

Sylvia believes President Donald Trump is the only one who can bring her husband to safety. Xi Jinping arrives Wednesday night for the first Chinese leader visit to the U.S. in more than a decade.

“President Trump has brought home over 100 Americans in his office,” Sylvia said, “and I am hoping that my husband is the next one.”

Sylvia helped her husband pack the night before and expected that this trip would be like his many others to China.

“He goes on these types of trips all the time,” she said. “Particularly to China, he was there in October of 2025, and there was no problem. It was just the usual kind of trip that he takes every other month.”

The trip felt so routine that Sylvia left the house to drop their daughter off at school before Zin woke up.

“Usually, he will call me after he gets seated in an airplane,” she said. “And this time he said, ‘I’m seated,’ and he texted me. And I said, ‘I’m in the shopping mall. Do you want me to go to the car so we can talk?’ And he’s like, ‘no, no, it’s OK. It’s only a couple hours flight. I’ll just call you when I land,’ and so I didn’t even take the time to go talk to him.”

Zin texted Sylvia when he landed in China. She hasn’t heard from him since.

“We called the immigration [office]. We called the airport. We called the luggage [office] to see what happened,” she said, “and we determined that there is something wrong. And so I called the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou on the morning of June 4 to report him missing, and I heard back from them on June 5 that they have been informed that he has been detained.”

Zin has been kept in an undisclosed location. All Sylvia knows is that he is in a small room with no windows and that he has developed knee pain and lost weight. He is interrogated for four to six hours a day.

No one knows why Zin has been detained. His research, which largely focuses on Myanmar, is open source, and everything is available on his website.

“I don’t know what it is about his work that they’re not happy with,” Sylvia said. “It is a very big unknown for us.”

 Michael Lucci, founder of State Armor, said China negotiates by capturing hostages before U.S. summits.

“This is just how the Chinese Communist Party negotiates,” Lucci told the Daily Signal. “They grab a bunch of American hostages so that we have to ask for them back in the next summit.”

Sylvia and Min Zin have been together for 23 years. She said she knew she wanted to marry him because he always makes her laugh.

“Any hardship that we go through, he will make it light, and he will make it bearable,” she said. “And I think that’s a really good quality for us to face anything that that’s going to come our way.”

Their 14-year-old daughter is old enough to understand how serious it is to be designated a “national security threat” by China, and she is worried about her father.

“She is old enough to understand what endangering national security means, and how that will change our family, and this is the first time where I’m doing the job of both mom and dad,” she said. “So it’s been very difficult for both of us.” 

When asked what her message is to Trump, Sylvia said, “Please bring my husband Min Zin’s name to President Xi.”

“Please work to bring him home,” she said. “President Trump is the only one who can do it, and we are praying and counting on him to bring my husband home.”

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