[4] Wang Yi met with President George W. Bush at the White House in 2006, together with Yu Jie, a democracy activist from Sichuan, and Li Boguang, a human rights attorney from Hunan, to discuss religious freedom in China.
[12][13] A review by the editorial board of the Washington Post called Wang "a paragon of the noble aspiration that people be allowed to think, speak, worship and assemble freely".
[17] After he had been detained for 48 hours, the Early Rain Covenant Church released Wang's "My Declaration of Faithful Disobedience" written two months earlier in anticipation of his arrest.
[18] On 30 December 2019, Wang was given a prison sentence of nine years by Chengdu Intermediate People's Court for "inciting subversion of state power and illegal business operations."
[19][20] On 31 December 2019, U.S. State Department called China for Wang's immediate and unconditional release in a statement, saying "This is yet another example of Beijing's intensification of repression of Chinese Christians and members of other religious groups".
He criticizes the Three-Self Patriotic Movement in China as emphasizing nationalism, which he claims results in a worship of secular authorities at the cost of valuing the local community.