Judges in Hong Kong delivered guilty verdicts in the landmark national security trial of the media tycoon and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai on Monday, following a five-year-old case that has come to symbolize the sweeping political changes in the city.
Mr. Lai, 78, looked ahead at the judges as one of them read the decision that he had been found guilty on two counts of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces,” in part over meetings he had held with politicians in the United States, and one count of conspiracy to publish seditious material in Apple Daily, the now shuttered Chinese-language newspaper he founded in 1995.
Esther Toh, one of three judges presiding over the hearing, said there was “no doubt” that Mr. Lai’s actions were motivated by “resentment and hatred” for China. She described Mr. Lai as “gleeful” about the prospect of U.S. government imposing sanctions on the city after the authorities had suppressed monthslong mass antigovernment protests that erupted in 2019.
Mr. Lai, the self-proclaimed “troublemaker” — whose Apple Daily once gave blanket coverage to the pro-democracy demonstrations — now faces up to life in prison. The court has set four days aside for a mitigation hearing starting on Jan. 12 and a sentence would be announced “as soon as possible,” Judge Toh said.
The police filled the streets outside the courthouse, at one point outnumbering the swarm of reporters present. Inside, Mr. Lai was seated in a glass box in a small courtroom and flanked by police officers and prison authorities on either side. He smiled when he entered the court, but his face was serious as the judge spoke for nearly 40 minutes, quoting his private WhatsApp messages with associates and former colleagues as evidence for the verdict. At times his wife, Teresa, closed her eyes but she looked straight ahead as Judge Toh delivered the verdict.
Mr. Lai, who waved to Teresa when he entered the courtroom, has been behind bars for five years, having previously been convicted of fraud for violating the terms of a lease agreement. Long known for his rotund features, he now appears more slim. His family says his health is deteriorating from being held in solitary confinement.
Hong Kong officials say Mr. Lai is receiving “adequate and comprehensive” medical care and that he had requested to be held in solitary confinement.
Mr. Lai’s supporters quickly condemned the decision. Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, who once served as director of Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital, said the verdict “brutally marks the end of free speech and the free press in a city where those freedoms underpinned what long was Asia’s freest city as well as its earliest and most stunning economic success stories.”
International human rights groups condemned the guilty verdict as further evidence of the wider crackdown on free speech in Hong Kong. Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s China director, said it showed how the city’s national security laws were designed to “silence” its people.
Elaine Pearson, the Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said Mr. Lai’s conviction was a travesty of justice.
Mr. Lai’s verdict comes as Hong Kong is still dealing with the aftermath of its most deadly fire in decades, an apartment complex blaze that killed at least 160 people last month. The national security police have made more than a dozen arrests since the fire and have been on heightened alert for what they say are “anti-China forces” looking to exploit the disaster to undermine social stability. Critics have said that the authorities are targeting people calling for greater government accountability.
The verdicts will bring attention to what analysts say is Hong Kong’s shrinking tolerance for dissent against the government and free speech, as well as the continued erosion of the “one country two systems” framework that is supposed to guarantee the city some autonomy from Beijing until 2047.
In the latest sign of those changes, the city’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Party, announced on Sunday that it would disband. The party has been shut out of Hong Kong’s legislature since 2021, when Beijing imposed a loyalty test for lawmakers.
“It’s a very bad signal about ‘one country, two systems,’ the fact that such a party that existed for 31 years was forced to disband,” said Emily Lau, a former chair of the party.
The political changes have been largely driven by two national security laws, one imposed by Beijing in 2020 and another law introduced by the Hong Kong government in 2024 that expanded its scope and specifically targeted treason, secession, subversion and sedition. Both laws were largely a response to the widespread and sometimes violent demonstrations that engulfed the Asian financial center in 2019.
The Chinese and Hong Kong governments have cast Mr. Lai as the mastermind of those protests. Prosecutors accused Mr. Lai of colluding with foreign governments to target China and Hong Kong with sanctions. They cited as evidence meetings between Mr. Lai and foreign diplomats and other officials in the United States, Britain and Japan.
Mr. Lai’s legal team argued that Mr. Lai did not call for sanctions since the 2020 national security law took effect. Some of Mr. Lai’s former colleagues testified against him in exchange for a reduction in their sentences.
“Nothing illustrates the draconian nature of the law more than the outcome” of the trial, said Thomas E. Kellogg, the executive director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown. Mr. Lai “has been criminally convicted for merely exercising his constitutional rights, which under Hong Kong’s autonomy regime, are supposed to be protected by the courts. Instead, they’re giving the Hong Kong government and Beijing a blank check to violate those rights.”
Foreign governments, including the United States and Britain (Mr. Lai is a British citizen), have condemned the prosecution and called for Mr. Lai’s release. President Trump has said that he would try to “save” Mr. Lai, and during a summit in South Korea in October he appealed directly to China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, for the media mogul’s release, Mr. Lai’s foreign legal team said.
Mr. Trump may be more reluctant now to press Mr. Xi about Mr. Lai, having softened his posture toward China in recent months. For the first time in more than 30 years, the White House released a national security strategy that did not criticize China’s authoritarian rule or press Beijing on human rights.
The U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong, which sent a representative to the courthouse on Monday, did not issue a statement on the decision.
It is unclear if China is interested in brokering a diplomatic deal for Mr. Lai’s release, potentially on medical grounds. Chinese and Hong Kong officials say privately that Mr. Lai must be made an example of and are concerned that he would use his freedom to renew his opposition to Beijing if he lived in exile abroad.
Lily Kuo and Pei-Lin Wu contributed reporting.
Alexandra Stevenson is the Shanghai bureau chief for The Times, reporting on China’s economy and society.
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