Donald Trump's policy towards promoting human rights in China appears to be a bundle of contradictions. On the one hand, he has refused to publicly criticize the country, refused to meet with the Dalai Lama and threatened to reduce funding for the Human Rights Council—the principal forum for the multilateral engagement with China on human rights. On the other hand, his administration has secured the release and safe passage of several political prisoners, sanctioned a Chinese official for human rights abuses under the Global Magnitsky Act and issued sharp criticisms of the country during the Human Rights Council's September meeting.

John Kamm, honored with two presidential awards and a MacArthur Fellowship, has worked on promoting human rights and rule of law in China with every administration since George H.W. Bush’s. He brings this experience to bear in critically examining the successes and failures of Trump's human rights policy towards China. In 1990, when Kamm was a vice president of Occidental Petroleum and president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, he intervened on behalf of a political prisoner detained during the Tiananmen Square protests. In 1999, Kamm founded Dui Hua Foundation. Kamm and Dui Hua have helped hundreds of political prisoners; built productive relationships with China, the United States and the European Union; and gained special consultative status with the United Nations. A well-known figure in Washington, D.C., he has testified before the U.S. Congress more than a dozen times on human rights in China.