'Praying for a Miracle'

The flap over a Chinese spy balloon has derailed the hopes of families of Americans detained by Beijing on dubious charges

- By John Feng

The postponement of a meeting between senior United States officials and counterparts in Beijing over a surveillance balloon detected over the continental U.S. and then shot down may further dash the hopes of American citizens held for years in China.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to travel to Beijing for sit-down talks with Chinese officials as a follow-up to Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping's meeting late last year. He would have been the first top U.S. diplomat to visit the country in five years.

But the presence of the spy balloon forced Washington to push back the talks to an unscheduled date a crushing blow to the families of American detainees who had hoped to use the occasion to throw light on their sentences. Tensions between the two superpowers remain high despite China's unusually conciliatory initial step of expressing "regret" over the incident.

When the talks are rescheduled, families will be expecting America's top diplomat to press his Chinese counterparts on the wrongful detention of U.S. citizens.

These Americans are held in Chinese prisons and detention centers, live under house arrest or are subject to exit bans. Some are believed to have been persecuted on religious grounds; others are likely victims of geopolitics. All are at the mercy of China's opaque criminal justice system, often with no recourse to legal assistance and little contact with home.