WASHINGTON—Pro-Beijing protesters allegedly attacked and injured a human rights activist seeking to spotlight abuses in China amid the Trump–Xi summit.
The injured woman is Xin Qin, a Falun Gong practitioner who was taking a photo of other demonstrators who held banners quietly across the street from the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington on Sept. 24.
One woman who initiated the attack repeatedly asked Xin to step back while pressing close to her, Xin told The Epoch Times. After Xin backed off five or six steps, she said the woman suddenly pulled her down backwards, and Xin’s hand and shoulder hit the ground.
Xin alleged that three or four other pro-Beijing protesters then joined in, punching and even biting her on her leg as she lay on the ground.
“It was just crazy,” Xin said. She said she had to keep both hands over her chest the entire time to prevent the group from taking her wallet and phone.
She added that the assailants didn’t stop even after the police arrived.
Three people at the scene identified the alleged initial attacker, who was wearing a red jacket, as Li Huahong, a Chinese immigrant based in New York City.
Li then pretended to faint after the police came to restrain her, according to videos and multiple people who witnessed the incident.
Xin sustained scrapes on her hand and legs in the process, she said, and her phone was also smashed.
“Every part of my body hurts,” she said.
One police officer handcuffed the assailant as another helped Xin get up.
Xin’s face became hot and swollen, and her eyes were red.
Xin Qin, a Falun Gong practitioner, displays her injuries a day after she was attacked by Chinese Communist Party supporters during a human rights demonstration, in Washington, on Sept. 25, 2026. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Earlier in the day, the pro-Beijing side also played a communist song mocking “American imperialists” as “robbers.”
Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline that features meditative exercises and a set of moral teachings centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.
In 1999, the Chinese communist regime ordered a brutal eradication campaign against the practice. Millions have been subjected to arbitrary detention, forced labor, torture, and even death by forced organ harvesting.
The incident occurred on the first day of the summit, shortly after the two countries’ leaders concluded bilateral talks.
Ahead of the meeting, lawmakers and advocates already expressed concerns about the regime suppressing dissent on U.S. soil around the occasion.
Chinese Communist Party supporters wrest a flag away from a pro-democracy activist around Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s arrival at the National Archives in Washington on Sept. 25, 2026. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
“We tell the world that this is a place where freedom of speech and expression is respected, and we know that China is engaged directly in threatening people here and threatening their families back in China,” he said.
Rather than hosting a state dinner, he suggested that the president brief Xi on “all the evidence” of Chinese transnational repression in the United States.
“It has to stop. This is not President Xi’s country,” he said, adding that people here should be free to express their beliefs without fearing repercussions.
Xin said she had hand cramps after the assault and was taken to the hospital.
The beating temporarily affected Xin’s vision. When the doctor was taking down her personal information, Xin struggled to find the right ID because she was unable to read what was on them, she said.
Two days after the alleged assault, Xin said she still couldn’t move her right elbow. Her neck and shoulder continued to ache, she said.
The police have opened an investigation, Xin said.
Li has a history of targeting multiple China critics, including other Falun Gong practitioners, human rights activists said.
In 2013, Queens Criminal Court found Li guilty of assaulting Falun Gong practitioners in New York’s Flushing neighborhood.
During Xi’s previous U.S. visit to San Francisco in 2023, a Chinese petitioner from Shanghai said the woman stepped on her foot and hit her in the head.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Li’s attorney for comment.
Witnesses said Chinese consulates and pro-China networks have recruited welcoming crowds by offering cash and expense-covered trips, similar to allegations made during other high-level Chinese officials’ overseas trips.
The incident marked the second of two similar incidents in three days.
In Toronto on Sept. 22, a man with a Chinese flag emblazoned on his jacket allegedly dismantled banners belonging to a Falun Gong practitioner protesting outside the Chinese Consulate. The man was accused of pushing and threatening her as she attempted to stop him, causing her chin to bleed.
“I’ll shoot you dead, believe it or not,” a video captured him saying. He allegedly kicked another woman who tried to film his actions.
