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Wife of American scholar wrongfully detained in China wants Trump to press Xi to release him
2026-09-23T08:47:19-0400 / CBS News
For over 100 days, Sylvia Zin has not been allowed to see or speak with her husband Min Zin, a U.S. citizen and scholar whose work focuses on Myanmar. She says he is being held without charge in China at a detention facility that is referred to by human rights groups as a “black site.”
In an interview with CBS News, Sylvia Zin shared that the Chinese Ministry of State Security, or MSS, has not formally charged him with a crime nor given him a trial date.
“He’s not a spy”
“They just said he’s under investigation for endangering national security. That’s all we know,” she tearfully explained. “He’s not a spy. He’s not doing anything wrong.”
She shared the terror of the first hours of Min’s disappearance. His last message to her was a brief text on June 3 to tell her that he had landed in the Chinese city of Kunming. He had traveled there from his home in Thailand for an academic conference at the invitation of a Chinese professor. That night, Sylvia Zin received calls from Min Zin’s worried colleagues.
“We started calling the immigration, the luggage — you know — carousel at the airport where he landed, the professor that invited him to see what happened to him,” Sylvia Zin said. “He didn’t check into the hotel, and so we knew, like, he was missing.”
Undated photo of scholar Min Zin, an American citizen who is being wrongfully detained in China. Photo provided by Sylvia Zin
The next day, Sylvia Zin called the U.S. consulates in the area to ask for help. She then received a call from a +86 area code, indicating it was a Chinese phone number.
“I answered right away,” she said, and described the caller’s voice as “very heavily accented.” She said she frantically took notes as the voice on the other end told her in English that the authorities were doing a “preliminary compulsory investigation.”
“I didn’t understand. I was trying to ask, like, ‘What does that mean? Does it mean you have my husband?’ You know, — what — ‘how is he?’ And then they just hung up,” Sylvia said.
Held in undisclosed location without access to lawyer
Min Zin is being held by China’s Ministry of State Security at a location classified as a “Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location” or RSDL, according to multiple sources closely tracking his case. Human rights groups refer to RSDLs as “black sites,” since Chinese authorities take people into custody at undisclosed locations without providing them with access to a lawyer or judicial review. The United Nations considers RSDL use to be a form of enforced disappearance and possibly torture.
U.S. officials declined to comment on the conditions of Min Zin’s captivity but confirmed to CBS News that Chinese authorities have permitted American consular officials to meet with him on a monthly basis in 30-minute increments at a nearby hotel.
Sylvia Zin described the three encounters that have so far taken place as heavily monitored. She has been told that her husband has lost weight and has developed knee pain, but Min Zin has not been permitted to discuss what has happened to him during his detention. He was able to say he was interrogated for four to six hours but she does not know how often he is being questioned.
She said that she has written letters to her husband for a U.S. official to read aloud to him. The family has retained an attorney, but Min Zin has not been permitted access to the lawyer.
“I want to know what I’m fighting against,” Sylvia Zin told CBS News in the interview, which took place in Washington last Friday. “You know, do I prepare for a trial? If there’s a purpose, you know, then I can kind of work towards that purpose, right?”
The State Department recently issued a warning to Americans traveling to mainland China due to “arbitrary enforcement of local laws, the use of exit bans without a fair and transparent process under the law, and the risk of unjust arrest or detention.”
The warning states that Chinese law allows a wide range of information to be classified as state secrets. That could result in increased harassment of academics conducting research, businesspeople collecting data or journalists. Past work with the U.S. government may also make Americans a target.
Undated photo of Min Zin at U.S. Capitol. Photo provided by Sylvia Zin
Sylvia Zin and her husband both fled Burma, now known as Myanmar, in their youth during the pro-democracy movement in the 1980s. They became naturalized U.S. citizens and California residents. Min Zin runs a think tank, ISP-Myanmar, which studies China’s role in Myanmar, which is run by a Beijing-backed military junta. U.S. officials confirmed that Min Zin’s organization received U.S. government funding in the past, and this may have been a factor that drew Chinese scrutiny.
Sylvia Zin said she believes her husband was set up, since authorities arrested him shortly after his arrival in China. He had planned to attend an academic conference at a university with links to the Chinese state. Min Zin’s June arrest appeared even more unusual given that he had been issued a 10-year multiple-entry visa and had visited Shanghai eight months earlier.
No detailed explanation for Min Zin’s arrest from Chinese authorities
Multiple sources told CBS News that Chinese authorities have not provided a detailed explanation for Min Zin’s arrest, and it remains unclear whether the MSS in Yunnan province conducted the arrest of its own volition or on the orders of the central government.
Sources indicated to CBS News that MSS authorities in that region typically oversee Beijing’s interests in neighboring Myanmar, which may have been why Min Zin’s work and his past advocacy for human rights were on their radar.
Doug Bandow, a senior foreign policy fellow at the CATO Institute, says Min Zin’s work is likely the reason for his detention. “My bet would be that this is Chinese policy working as normal,” Bandow told CBS News, “not a focus on the United States.”
He thinks that China “wants to punish researchers who are revealing information they really don’t want the world to know.” Observing that Myanmar’s military regime “has an awful international reputation,” Bandow said China “would prefer not to be seen as a promoter of that regime.
“From their standpoint, this sends a message: Don’t get too close to what we do in Myanmar,” Bandow said.
Multiple sources told CBS News that the timing of Min Zin’s June arrest was surprising, given that President Trump had just met weeks earlier with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a May summit and discussed others in Chinese captivity. Yet the very next month, Chinese authorities arbitrarily detained Min Zin.
“They want to test what…the United States’ response would be. And if the response isn’t very forceful, that shows that China can continue to do this and get away with it,” said Josh Kurlantzick, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. He added that “it’s a source of extra leverage” China may have in the summit Thursday between Xi and Mr. Trump.
Will Trump press Xi on Americans arbitrarily detained in China?
During a briefing with reporters ahead of the U.N. General Assembly, a Trump administration official was asked whether President Trump would raise the broad issue of Americans arbitrarily detained in China when he meets with Xi in Washington Thursday. The official said that Mr. Trump frequently “raises Americans that have been wrongfully detained and sometimes folks that aren’t Americans that are wrongfully detained there in China.”
The Trump administration did act in August, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio granted Min Zin the formal designation of having been “wrongfully detained.” That legal designation pledges the full support of the U.S. government in seeking his release.
It followed what Assistant Secretary Dylan Johnson described as an extensive review of the circumstances of Min Zin’s detention following his travel to a conference at the invitation of the Chinese government. In a statement, Johnson pledged that the U.S. would continue advocating for him and all U.S. citizens arbitrarily detained or exit banned from China.
On Tuesday, officials from the National Security Council and State Department met with Min Zin’s family at the White House.
Min Zin and Sylvia Zin’s U.S. congressman is Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California. He’s also the ranking member on the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. He told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” last Sunday that “we cannot have American citizens or scholars in America be detained or disappeared because of what they say.”
Khanna also said he and others were in China last year and raised this issue after they had heard about Chinese students in the U.S. “who were not being allowed to continue because they may have engaged in some protest or had an errant social media tweet.”
“We had heard cases of people who were detained, business leaders or people doing business because they disagreed with the Chinese government, and that is unacceptable to the United States,” Khanna said.
Seismologist Youlin Chen in Chinese custody since 2024
Another American academic, Dr. Youlin Chen, is also considered by the U.S. to be wrongfully detained. Chen is a seismologist who was taken in 2024. In the past, he has conducted research on North Korea for the State Department.
In a statement to CBS News, Chen’s wife, Yufang Rong, said she is in Washington this week meeting with State Department and National Security Council officials to advocate for her husband’s release. She said that U.S. officials confirmed that Mr. Trump plans to discuss her husband with President Xi.
Asked about whether the cases would indeed be raised during the U.S.-China summit, Johnson told CBS News that the Trump administration has called at the highest levels for the immediate release of Min Zin, Youlin Chen and all Americans wrongfully detained overseas.
“We want no American left behind and we are working to make that a reality.” Assistant Secretary Johnson told CBS News in a statement.
Sylvia Zin and her family are hoping that means the president himself will press Xi Jinping.
“The president has brought home over 100 wrongfully detained Americans, right? So, I’m hoping my husband is the next one,” she said.
Justine Redman contributed to this report.