In June, the Chinese government invited an American scholar to an academic conference in Kunming, and its security services detained him inside the airport. On September 24, standing at the White House, Xi Jinping invited 100,000 young Americans to China.
The scholar is Min Zin, a U.S. citizen who runs the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar. He flew into Yunnan on June 3. Provincial authorities later told the U.S. embassy he was under criminal investigation for “endangering” China’s national security. On August 20 the State Department designated him wrongfully detained, the second American with that status in China. The first, Boston seismologist Youlin Chen, was seized at Beijing’s airport in November 2024 as he prepared to fly home. Beijing’s foreign ministry answered the designation by declaring there is “no such thing as so-called wrongful detention.”
Keep both of those dates in mind when you read Xi’s offer.
It doubles the pledge he made in San Francisco in November 2023, whe…