Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen met in Washington with Dr. Yang Jianli, President of Freedom Now and a long time advocate for democratic development and human rights in China. Dr. Yang's links to China's democracy movement go back to the Tiananmen Square incident and subsequent massacre in 1989. Following that incident, Dr. Yang fled China and pursued academic studies in the US. He was placed on a list of 49 Chinese pro democracy activists who were barred from entering China.

Dr. Yang became a cause celebre in the Spring of 2002 when he used a friend's passport to re enter China for the first time in thirteen years and visited the northeastern part of the country to research protests taking place there. For doing so he was arrested by the Chinese Bureau of National Public Security. An international outcry and a US House Resolution condemning his arrest and asking for his release did nothing to keep him from going to jail in China and after serving his five year sentence, he was released last August 2007.