Trump Says He Helped Free U.C.L.A. Players in China. Critics Ask, What About Activists?<br />William Nee, a China researcher for Amnesty International, said Ms. Liu was being punished "simply for being the wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo."<br />Friends of Ms. Liu hoped Mr. Trump, whose administration had previously called for her freedom, would raise the issue with Mr. Xi during his Beijing visit.<br />Here’s a look at some of the Chinese activists whose cases experts say Mr. Trump should have raised in Beijing: After the death in July of Liu Xiaobo, the<br />Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was China’s most prominent democracy activist, many advocates wondered what would happen to his wife, the artist Liu Xia.<br />Mr. Trump’s comments intensified criticism from human rights activists, who said<br />that by focusing on the players from the University of California, Los Angeles, the president squandered a chance to help free Chinese dissidents, lawyers, journalists and scholars facing far harsher sentences or constraints on their freedom.<br />team, who were accused of stealing sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store in Hangzhou, China, probably would have been<br />released even if Mr. Trump had not raised the case with President Xi Jinping during a visit this month to Beijing.<br />20, 2017<br />President Trump has suggested that he saved three American college basketball players,<br />who had been detained in China for shoplifting, from prison terms as long as a decade.<br />But Mr. Trump has not said whether he did so, and the Chinese authorities have not offered any new details about her fate, adding to fears<br />that the government may continue to restrict her freedom.
