The imprisonment of publisher Jimmy Lai, 78, for criticizing the Chinese Communist government is analogous to the subjection of the once great Hong Kong: Both are tragic victims of Beijing’s iron fist of totalitarianism — and the free world stood by and watched it all happen.
Jimmy Lai, a successful Hong Kong businessman and the founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, was sentenced to life in prison on Monday after he was found guilty of one charge of sedition and two charges of violating the much-maligned National Security Law.
The law, which criminalized anything seen as undermining China’s authority, including press criticisms, has turned Hong Kong from one of the freest cities in the world into a police state.
The road to totalitarianism began much earlier than that, however. Prior to 1997, Hong Kong had been a dependent territory of the United Kingdom but was handed back over to China in 1997. As part of the U.K. and China’s agreement, Hong Kong would remain semi-autonomous, operating under a democratic government and its own constitution, which granted rights not allowed in China.
This was known as “one country, two systems,” but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing did not keep the agreement, choosing to harshly restrict long-held rights, such as free speech and a free press.
In response, pro-democracy sentiment swept Hong Kong in 2019, as tens of thousands of Hong Kong citizens took to the streets to protest Beijing’s crackdown on those freedoms.
The tension between Hong Kong’s citizens and the CCP fully exploded in 2020 with the passage of the National Security Law. The law allowed the government to target activists, protesters, media members, and critics of the government as seditious and inspiring insurrection.
Chinese loyalists also took control of Hong Kong’s leadership, acting simply as an arm of the CCP.
Law enforcement then raided Lai’s Apple Daily, ransacking the offices. Financial backers, executives, editors, and a journalist were all arrested and Apple Daily’s assets were frozen.
Lai was arrested in 2020 for organizing a vigil for the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre in which the CCP used tanks and soldiers to gun down and run over pro-freedom protesters who had gathered in Beijing.
Authorities had long banned all events and memorials commemorating the horrific event. In chargin Lai, they claimed the publisher was “inciting” others to attend the “unlawful assemblies.”
Lai was sentenced to 14 months in prison for those offenses but has spent the last five years in prison awaiting sentencing for charges of sedition and violating the National Security Law. This week, he was given a sentence of life in prison this week.
Judge Esther Tho said, “There is no doubt that (Lai) had harbored his resentment and hatred of the PRC [People’s Republic of China].”
She ruled that Lai had sought the help of the United States “to help bring down” Chinese authorities “with the excuse of helping the people of HK.”
The 78-year-old Lai, who is a British citizen, is set to spend the rest of his life in prison unless world leaders can sway China’s President Xi Jinping to release Lai.
His daughter, Claire Lai, said she and her family are desperate to get her father out of prison due to his failing health.
She said that when she visited him, his nails were changing colors and falling off and his teeth were rotting. She also said he has diabetes and has been left in solitary confinement.
Hong Kong leadership claims that Lai is receiving medical care and have requested that he be incarcerated alone for his own safety.
The appeals process could take up to eight years, time that Claire says her father doesn’t have. “If we wait to the end of the appeals process, there will not be a man at the end of that process,” she stated.
President Donald Trump stated that he has already requested Lai’s release, saying, “I feel so badly. I spoke to President Xi about it, and I asked to consider his release. He’s not well. He’s an older man, and he’s not well. So, I did put that request out — we’ll see what happens.”
Claire Lai said that she has met with legislators of both parties, who have sought to free her father. “We have been met with such kindness and such grace and just such generosity, and I think that is extremely humbling, and I’m extremely grateful for it,” Claire recalled.
Jimmy Lai is a devout Catholic who began his life as a poor child driven to work in Mao Zedong’s communist China. At the age of 12, he managed to escape China by hiding on a fishing boat bound for Hong Kong. He eventually started clothing and media businesses in his newly adopted country, Hong Kong, and eventually became a billionaire. Lai still has British citizenship and could have fled the future persecution when China began its crackdown on his businesses, but he refused to leave his home.
His son, Sebastien, who is living outside of Hong Kong and pressing the British government to do more to free his father, said that he always knew his dad was “doing the right thing and not the easy thing.”
“You have someone who is, by all accounts, successful, but willing to give everything that he has for his beliefs. That in some sense would shame some people and therefore some people would not like him because of that,” Sebastien said. “He always had the advantage that he came from nothing. He also had the advantage of knowing that even with nothing he’d be okay.”
Claire says that Jimmy has been focused on his Catholic faith in prison, drawing pictures of Christ and Mary. She thinks that if he is freed, he will devote the rest of his life and attention to God and family, not politics.
Jimmy Lai and Hong Kong’s stories follow the same trajectory. Lai grew up in communist China where Mao and the party plunged a nation into abject poverty, forced millions into slave labor, starved countless millions, and silenced all dissent — but managed to flee to a free country where he worked hard, found faith, and became a billionaire.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong, though a twist of fate, left China long before the horrors of communism hit and became one of the most prosperous places in the world, a center of freedom and the free market.
Now Lai is once again locked inside China’s tyrannical system — as is Hong Kong.
China claimed it would honor Hong Kong’s liberty, but as communist nations always do, it reneged on its promise and soon crushed Hong Kong with its totalitarian ideology.
Now, even as Jimmy finds himself housed in a prison, Hong Kong has become a prison for all those who live there for they no longer have any freedoms: not to protest nor to speak nor to disagree.
All of this ought to be a warning to those in the West flirting with socialism and communism. If leftist tyranny can transform Hong Kong — once a beacon of freedom and prosperity — into a police state, then it can just as easily destroy the West. And anyone paying attention can see that it’s already made a lot of progress towards that end.
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