Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong newspaper publisher who spent decades fighting for the territory’s democratic freedoms, has been convicted on national security charges and may spend the rest of his life behind bars.
He may not have much time left. Mr. Lai marked his 78th birthday in prison on Dec. 8. Once a large and robust man, he has lost a significant amount of weight and suffers from diabetes and heart trouble.
Mr. Lai is the most consequential dissident in China since Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died in a Chinese prison in 2017. Mr. Lai’s conviction on Monday is a severe blow for the future of civil liberties in Hong Kong. It’s also now a critical test of whether the United States and other Western democracies will stand up for the values they profess to hold dear.
President Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain have in the past called for Mr. Lai to be freed. But piecemeal pro forma appeals are not enough. Mr. Lai could face life in prison (his sentence is yet to be announced). At a time when liberal values are under assault globally, Western leaders must meet the moment by acting swiftly to apply pressure on Chinese trade and economic weak points to win Mr. Lai’s release on humanitarian grounds.
Mr. Lai’s is a remarkable rags-to-riches story: He fled Mao-era China for Hong Kong as a 12-year-old stowaway and worked for years in factories before building a clothing empire.
China’s brutal suppression of the 1989 Beijing pro-democracy demonstrations inspired him to move into publishing, which Mr. Lai saw as the best way to advocate Hong Kong’s civil liberties. Beijing had pledged to uphold those freedoms after Britain returned the territory to China in 1997, but it has systematically rolled them back. Mr. Lai’s publications, including the Apple Daily newspaper, became wildly popular due to their brash, entertaining style and frequent harsh criticism of Chinese and Hong Kong authorities.
Hong Kong was seized by huge protests in 2019 against Beijing’s tightening grip on the city. That same year, Mr. Lai discussed the protests with then-Vice President Mike Pence and other U.S. officials during a meeting in Washington. In 2020, China passed a national security law that gave authorities in the city sweeping powers to curtail dissent. Mr. Lai is the law’s highest-profile victim: He was charged with colluding with foreign forces — a charge that he denies — for discussing the Hong Kong protests with the Americans, culminating in his conviction on Monday. He was also convicted on a charge of conspiracy to produce and distribute seditious materials.
Mr. Lai has spent much of the last five years in solitary confinement, a violation of the U.N.’s Nelson Mandela Rules, which state that more than 15 days amounts to torture or inhumane treatment. Hong Kong’s government has denied Mr. Lai, who has both Hong Kong and British citizenship, is being mistreated and says he has requested to be kept apart from other prisoners.
Even before this week’s verdict, international support for Mr. Lai was growing. In October, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada called for his release, Pope Leo XIV met the wife and daughter of Mr. Lai — who is Catholic — in a rare show of Vatican support for a Chinese dissident, and President Trump is reported to have pressed China’s president, Xi Jinping, on the matter when the two leaders met in late October.
Mr. Trump said on the presidential campaign trail last year that it would be “easy” to free Mr. Lai. Mr. Trump should deliver on that boast by leveraging the global groundswell in Mr. Lai’s favor and the recent reduction of American tensions with China after Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi agreed to pause their trade war.
Mr. Xi is the most hard-line Chinese leader in decades, but there is reason to think that an intensified pressure campaign could work.
Allowing Mr. Lai to go abroad would be relatively cost-free for China. Although Mr. Lai’s past suggests that he would continue to speak out about the destruction of Hong Kong’s civil liberties, his advancing age and the loss of his media empire — which has been liquidated under government pressure — will limit how much influence he can exert in the city from overseas.
Mr. Trump and other Western leaders can even make the case that freeing Mr. Lai would yield tangible benefits for Beijing.
China is keen to restore Hong Kong’s image as a leading financial center governed by the rule of law, a reputation tarnished by the national security legislation and the wider assault on basic freedoms.
China could also avoid the public relations disaster it suffered through its treatment of Mr. Liu. Jailed in 2009 after calling for political reform in China, Mr. Liu died of liver cancer in a prison hospital eight years later, after Beijing refused to allow him to travel overseas for medical treatment. That made him the first Nobel laureate to die in captivity since Carl von Ossietzky in 1938 under the Nazis, prompting harsh international criticism of China and undermining its push to be seen as a responsible global player.
Mr. Starmer is planning a state visit to China, possibly as early as next month, and Mr. Trump has said he’ll visit in April. China has every reason to want those meetings with important trade partners to go smoothly at a time when its economy faces significant challenges. Western leaders should use that leverage to warn Beijing that Mr. Lai’s continued imprisonment would harm relations and that it cannot continue flouting global norms without repercussions.
Acting to secure the freedom of a man who has bravely defended democracy and free speech would demonstrate to China — and the world — that those values are still worth fighting for.
Mark L. Clifford is the author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.” He is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation and was previously a director of Next Digital, the parent company of Apple Daily.
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