'President Obama most likely would be in prison': China rights record slammed in US ahead of Xi Jinping's state visit

US activists and lawmakers slammed China’s recent rights record on Friday as controversy mounts ahead of a visit to Washington by President Xi Jinping.

READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Xi Jinping’s US visit: itinerary, issues and delegation

One US lawmaker declared that if Xi’s host Barack Obama had been Chinese, he would have been imprisoned rather than elected president, as US-based Chinese campaigners gave evidence to Congress.

“If President Obama had lived his life not in the United States but in China, as a Christian, a community organiser, a civil rights lawyer, a constitutional law professor, he would not be enjoying a grand fete with Xi Jinping,” said Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas.

“President Obama most likely would be in prison or much, much worse.”

The Congressional-Executive Committee on China, which produces an annual report on human rights in the United States’ great power rival, met on Friday in a bid to set the tone before the landmark visit. 

The panel invited several US-based dissidents, journalists and rights activists to bear witness to what they said was a systematic abuse of civic and human rights under China’s one party state.