When Grace Jin Drexel couldn’t contact her father on October 10, she tried not to panic. She had just heard that one of the pastors of his underground Christian church in China had been detained by authorities; maybe he was busy sorting out the situation.

Then her fears were confirmed. Her father, Ezra Jin Mingri, and dozens of other members of Zion Church had been swept up in a mass crackdown across various congregations and Chinese cities – the largest suppression since a similar wave of arrests in 2018.

Chinese authorities have long seen Christianity as an unwelcome foreign influence and a threat to government control, experts say – and this crackdown sends a particularly stark message, targeting a well-known church that has been shut down once before.

But Drexel and her family, all American citizens living in the US while Jin resided in China, hope a major diplomatic meeting this week might change that.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea. While trade is expected to dominate the conversation, there are growing calls for Trump to raise the issue of the crackdown and Jin’s detention.

The summit presents “a very unique timing,” said Drexel, who works as a staffer in the US Senate. “We think that the Trump administration’s prioritization of Americans in this scenario also could be helpful for my father as well, to bring a family member of an American citizen home to be with us in the US and s