{"id":77372,"date":"2026-05-16T08:30:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T23:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/may\/16\/trumps-lack-of-focus-on-human-rights-in-china-is-big-departure-for-us-diplomacy"},"modified":"2026-05-16T08:30:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T23:30:53","slug":"trumps-lack-of-focus-on-human-rights-in-china-is-big-departure-for-us-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=77372","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s lack of focus on human rights in China is big departure for US diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Change reflects both transformation of US in Trump era and China\u2019s increasing confidence on world stage<\/p>\n<p>Asked before he departed for Beijing if he would raise with the Chinese president the case of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/jimmy-lai\">Jimmy Lai<\/a>, the pro-democracy activist jailed in Hong Kong, Donald Trump said: \u201cI\u2019ll bring him up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But, the US president added: \u201cIt\u2019s like saying to me, \u2018If Comey ever went to jail, would you let him out?\u2019 It might be a hard one for me.\u201d Trump was referring to James B Comey, a former FBI director and a frequent target of Trump\u2019s ire.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/may\/16\/trumps-lack-of-focus-on-human-rights-in-china-is-big-departure-for-us-diplomacy\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Change reflects both transformation of US in Trump era and China\u2019s increasing confidence on world stageAsked before he departed for Beijing if he would raise with the Chinese president the case of Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy activist jailed in Hong Ko&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4154,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,415,53,3034,47,631,42,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-donald-trump","category-human-rights","category-jimmy-lai","category-us-news","category-us-politics","category-world-news","category-xi-jinping"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4154"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77373,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77372\/revisions\/77373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}