By Bob Fu

Every summit between world leaders comes with a priority list. When President Donald Trump meets Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping on May 14-15, the agenda will undoubtedly be packed with issues of enormous geopolitical consequence: the wars raging in the Middle East, escalating tensions over Taiwan, trade and tariff disputes, militarization in the South China Sea, and the Chinese regime’s campaign of transnational repression.

These are all serious matters deserving urgent attention between the leaders of the world’s two most powerful nations.

But President Trump should also carry another list with him into the meeting room — a list of names.

Not the names of military commanders, negotiators, or tariff officials. A list of prisoners of conscience: pastors, democracy advocates, human rights lawyers, whistleblowers, and ordinary citizens unjustly imprisoned or forcibly disappeared by the Chinese Communist Party because they dared to speak the truth, worship freely, or defend human dignity.

President Ronald Reagan understood the power of such a list.

Throughout the Cold War, Reagan famously carried in his pocket the names of prisoners of conscience suffering under Soviet oppression. Whether he was meeting Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev or other communist officials, Reagan consistently raised these names. It reportedly became so “annoying” to Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze that he complained to Secretary of State George Shultz, asking why the American president insisted on wasting valuable summit time discussing “non-priority” issues instead of nuclear disarmament and superpower rivalry.

Shultz reportedly shrugged and admitted that even he sometimes became frustrated by Reagan’s persistence. But then he told his Soviet counterpart something profoundly important: these names had become the American president’s priority.

History vindicated Reagan’s moral clarity. Many prisoners whose names were repeatedly raised by the United States were eventually released, exiled to freedom, or reunited with their families.

President Trump now has the opportunity to demonstrate similar leadership.

He can show Xi Jinping — and the 1.3 billion Chinese people watching — that America still stands for liberty, religious freedom, and human dignity. He can make clear that the United States does not measure success only in tariffs, military leverage, or economic concessions, but also in whether innocent people are allowed to live freely without fear of imprisonment for their beliefs.

Who should be on that list?

Certainly Jimmy Lai, the courageous Catholic publisher and pro-democracy advocate languishing in a Hong Kong prison.

Pastor John Cao should also be included. After spending seven years in a Chinese prison for conducting humanitarian work along the China-Myanmar border, he has still been prevented from reuniting with his wife and children in America — even two years after completing his sentence.

Then there is Gao Zhisheng, known as the “conscience of China,” one of the bravest human rights lawyers of our time. Gao has been forcibly disappeared for nearly nine years after repeated kidnappings and torture by Chinese security agents. His wife and daughter are American citizens still waiting desperately for answers.

President Trump should also raise the case of Dr. Wang Bingzhang, a permanent resident of both the United States and Canada, now 78 years old. Widely regarded as the father of the overseas Chinese democracy movement, Wang was kidnapped by Chinese agents from Vietnam in 2002 and has spent more than 24 years effectively buried alive inside China’s prison system.

The world also must not forget Zhang Zhan, the courageous Wuhan citizen journalist who exposed the truth about COVID-19 during the earliest days of the pandemic. After already enduring imprisonment for her reporting, she now faces another four-year sentence simply for telling the truth.

Nor should America remain silent about the thousands of persecuted Christians imprisoned across China. Among them are Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri of Beijing Zion Church, Elder Li Yingqiang, Pastor Yang Rongli of Golden Lampstand Church, and Pastor Wang Yi of Early Rain Covenant Church — faithful believers punished for refusing to surrender the authority of the church to the Communist Party.

These names matter.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, America was founded upon the revolutionary principle that our rights come not from government, but from God. Religious liberty became our First Freedom — the cornerstone upon which all other freedoms depend.

As the leader of the free world, President Trump should remind Xi Jinping that these prisoners are not forgotten. Their names belong not merely on an advocacy report, but in the pocket of the American president.

And he should tell Xi clearly: this is America’s priority list.

They need to be freed now.

Rev. Bob Fu, Ph.D. is Senior Fellow for International Religious Freedom at Family Research Council and is the founder and president of ChinaAid.

This article originally appeared here.