The State Department on Thursday urged China to free a U.S. citizen it says has been wrongfully detained on espionage allegations.
Min Zin, an academic and the head of a Myanmar-focused think tank, was taken into custody by Chinese authorities on June 3 after traveling to Yunnan province for an academic conference he had been invited to attend near the border.
“Secretary Rubio has formally designated US citizen Min Zin as wrongfully detained,” Dylan Johnson, the assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said in a post on X.
Johnson added, “We call on Beijing to release all U.S. citizens arbitrarily detained or exit banned in China,” emphasizing that “the safety and security of U.S. citizens is the State Department’s top priority.”
Zin is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and founded the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP) — Myanmar in 2016.
According to his think tank, Zin was previously a student activist in Myanmar’s 1988 pro-democracy movement, and his academic work has centered on democratization.
ISP has monitored the performance and shortcomings of Myanmar’s government, which took power after a military-engineered election and later received public support from China.
Zin was arrested after arriving in Kunming, a city in southwestern China, where authorities accused the American citizen of spying and endangering Chinese national security.
The ISP denied the allegations and pleaded with the State Department to help free their founder as President Trump prepares to meet China’s Xi Jinping in September.
“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 ISP said in a statement.
Zin is one of two US citizens being wrongfully detained by China, according to the State Department.
Youlin Chen, a seismologist who studied North Korean nuclear tests, was arrested at Beijing International Airport while trying to fly home to Boston, with China also accusing him of spy charges.
