Xi Jinping received a red-carpet welcome at the White House this week. Pastor John Cao is in Changsha with stage 4 cancer in his bones, and Xi’s regime won’t give him a passport.

That contrast tells you most of what you need to know about the man across the table from President Trump.

Pastor Cao is a lawful permanent resident of the United States. His wife and two sons live in North Carolina. He has a grandson he has never held. He spent seven years in a Chinese prison for his ministry and finished that sentence in March 2024. He has been trapped in China ever since. He has applied for a passport five times, and Beijing has said no five times. No law is keeping him there. Cruelty is, and so is Beijing’s wish for leverage. Xi Jinping should release Pastor Cao now and let him come home to his family.

China’s regime has declared war on God, and that is its policy, not a figure of speech.

Under Xi, the Communist Party has pulled hundreds of crosses off churches. It has banned unlicensed preaching online, put clergy through loyalty tests and on a national registry, and ordered that the faith be “sinicized,” meaning rewritten to serve the Party. In October 2025, authorities began the largest crackdown on house churches in decades. They took Pastor Ezra Jin of Beijing’s Zion........

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