Washington D.C. – Newsday, May 01, 2025
For eight years, Kai Li, of Huntington, held on to hope that he would be freed from a Chinese prison on charges he was acting as a U.S. spy.
Freedom came on Day 3,001 — a number his son, Harrison Li, has engraved to memory after lobbying lawmakers for years to fight on behalf of his father.
On Wednesday, father and son walked the halls of the U.S. Capitol to thank those they say played a role in negotiating Li’s return last November, and to advocate on behalf of Americans still detained overseas.
“I believed in my heart, from the bottom of my heart, that ‘my government won’t give up,’” Li, 62, told Newsday as he sat next to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
Harrison Li, 27, said Schumer’s office was the first congressional office he called when the Li family learned their patriarch had been detained in Shanghai in September 2016 on espionage charges. Li and U.S. officials have said the charges were fabricated, and contend the owner of an import-and-export business and two gas stations was “wrongfully detained.”
Kai Li, a naturalized U.S. citizen, said he was held in secret detention for nearly two years after being detained on a trip to see family. In July 2018 he was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to media reports.
Schumer said he advocated directly to Chinese President Xi Jinping for Li’s release during a bipartisan trip to China in 2023 and repeatedly raised Li’s case to the White House. Schumer said Harrison Li reached out weekly to ensure his father’s case was not forgotten.
