The landmark trial of Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong media mogul and prominent democracy campaigner, wrapped up on Thursday. But whether or not he is freed may depend more on a political decision than a legal one.
The question hanging over the case is not so much whether the city’s courts will convict him — in national security cases, they almost always do. It is whether China, under pressure from foreign governments, will decide there is more to gain from keeping the outspoken publisher locked up or from letting him go.
Mr. Lai, 77, who appeared in court this week looking thinner and tired after years behind bars, has become a symbol of how free speech has been crushed in Hong Kong since Beijing imposed a national security law on the city five years ago to quash unrest. His lawyers finished their legal arguments on Thursday, but the three national security judges are expected to take months to issue their verdict, which could send him to prison for life.
“We are done, then,” the judges said on Thursday morning, adding that the parties would be informed of the verdict “in good time.”
Diplomats, reporters and supporters of Mr. Lai filled the courtroom in the final days of a trial that began in late 2023, highlighting the international scrutiny to which his case has been subjected. Court employees warned those sitting in the public gallery not to show him support, but many made heart shapes with their hands as he entered. The verdict will be followed closely by the United States and by Britain, where Mr. Lai holds citizenship.
Mr. Lai smiled and waved to family members and other supporters as he entered the courtroom, and as he left.
The authorities have used the national security law to crack down on civil liberties that had long distinguished Hong Kong from the rest of China, such as the freedom of assembly and the press.
Mr. Lai, who founded a now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper called Apple Daily, is accused of “collusion with foreign forces” and “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces,” charges that can be punished by up to life in prison. Prosecutors have described him as the “mastermind” who orchestrated the mass antigovernment protests that swept across Hong Kong in 2019.
His trial has raised concerns among observers that Hong Kong’s courts, long vaunted for their independence, are under growing pressure from Beijing, which repeatedly made clear it regarded him as guilty. In December 2020, Hong Kong’s highest court ordered him back to jail just days after he had been granted bail, after Chinese state-backed media denounced the lower court’s decision.
Now, given the nearly 100 percent conviction rate of national security cases in Hong Kong courts, his family and well-connected supporters have staked their hopes on a diplomatic deal to secure his release.
Earlier this month, President Trump said he would do everything he could to “save” Mr. Lai, while acknowledging that China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, “would not be exactly thrilled.”
Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, said that if Beijing were thinking strategically, it would release Mr. Lai as a “low-cost good will gesture” to keep relations with Washington on steadier footing.
So far, though, Mr. Xi has shown little appetite for compromise. His government will likely want to make an example of Mr. Lai to demonstrate the consequences of challenging Beijing’s authority. Mr. Singleton predicted that Mr. Xi would pursue “a maximalist line” and “turn a solvable case into a White House liability that risks embarrassing” Mr. Trump, after the U.S. president said publicly that he would help Mr. Lai.
In practice, the Trump administration has prioritized trade stability over human rights. This month it extended a trade truce with China for another three months, in a move to avoid escalating tensions.
Mr. Trump also appeared to try and lower expectations, saying that he had merely promised to bring up Mr. Lai’s case with the Chinese, and has already done so.
“Sadly, human rights no longer anchor the bilateral agenda. Export controls and industrial competition do,” Mr. Singleton said. “Lai’s case is morally clarifying, but politically marginal in a relationship now organized around strategic technology and tariffs.”
Mr. Lai’s son, Sebastien Lai, began mounting a campaign lobbying international leaders for his father’s release in 2022, after the media tycoon was sentenced to more than five years in prison on a separate charge. That sentence, which some lawyers had described as unusually harsh, made Sebastian Lai skeptical of the independence of Hong Kong’s courts.
“That’s when I realized my father was never going to get a fair trial,” Sebastien Lai said in a recent phone interview. “I personally think that the way to get him out is through advocacy.”
Mr. Lai’s health has faltered after more than three years in detention, mostly in solitary confinement. His trial was adjourned at points, most recently so that he could be fitted with a portable heart monitor after his lawyers said that he had experienced heart palpitations. Mr. Lai also suffers from diabetes and appears to have lost weight, a far cry from the figure who once carried the nickname “Fatty Lai” among admirers and opponents.
The Hong Kong government has condemned what it described as “slanderous remarks” by “external forces and anti-China media” about Mr. Lai’s case as interference with the judicial process. It said that the legal proceedings are being handled in accordance with the law, that people held in custody in its correctional facilities are provided with medical support and that Mr. Lai had requested to be in solitary confinement. A lawyer in Hong Kong representing Mr. Lai did not respond to a request for comment.
In court, prosecutors focused on meetings Mr. Lai had held with American politicians, messages he had exchanged with officials, and views that he had expressed in interviews with news outlets or on social media.
Mr. Lai denies the charges and during his testimony, which ran for more than 50 days, said that he did not seek political favors from anyone overseas beyond asking them for their support for Hong Kong. His lawyer argued in closing that it was not wrong to support freedom of expression, or to exert pressure on the government in the hopes of changing its policies.
Mr. Lai also faces a separate charge of conspiring to publish seditious material in Apple Daily. On the stand, he defended his intentions in running the newspaper, saying the publication reflected the values of the Hong Kong people. “All I was doing was carrying a torch to the reality,” Mr. Lai said.
Some observers note that a guilty verdict could paradoxically open a window for Beijing to consider releasing him on medical grounds.
“Once the Hong Kong government and Beijing have the guilty verdict in hand, they may feel more leeway to allow Lai to leave Hong Kong on medical parole,” said Thomas E. Kellogg, the executive director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University. “At the end of the day, any decision on humanitarian parole would have to come from Beijing, and most likely from Xi Jinping himself.”
The Chinese government has occasionally responded to diplomatic pressure over human rights in the past. In 2018, after lobbying by German diplomats and the personally intervention of Angela Merkel, who was the German chancellor at the time, China allowed Liu Xia, the widow of the pro-democracy activist and writer, Liu Xiaobo, to travel to Berlin for medical reasons. Ms. Liu had lived for years under house arrest, despite never having been accused of a crime.
Sebastien Lai said that his greatest fear is of his father dying behind bars. Mr. Trump’s recent comment was “what gives us hope that he will one day be free,” he said.
Tiffany May is a reporter based in Hong Kong, covering the politics, business and culture of the city and the broader region.
David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.
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