For those who speak of the global dangers to democracy, a grim milestone deserves their attention and resounding condemnation: the February 9 conviction of Hong Kong dissident Jimmy Lai by a Chinese court.
In the imagination of the Chinese Communist Party, Lai’s conviction closes the book on a difficult man: a Catholic, a publisher, a democrat. Lai, 78 years old and in poor health, was convicted under the elastic logic of the Beijing-imposed National Security Law and is slated to fade quietly into history.
We must hope that Lai’s story holds up as an indictment of the Chinese regime.
Not for violence, espionage or corruption. Lai’s crime was that he had run a newspaper, Apple Daily, which covered Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and reported critically on the city’s Beijing-appointed regulators.
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The US has urged China to overturn what Secretary of State Marco Rubio called an “unjust and tragic” verdict against Hong Kong publisher and democracy activist Jimmy Lai. (Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images)
Lai’s harsh twenty-year prison sentence is intended to teach a lesson: that in today’s Hong Kong, conscience is subversion; that loyalty to the truth is treason; that even peaceful dissent will be crushed without apology.
Lai came to Hong Kong as a penniless refugee. He started life as a child laborer before eventually becoming a clothing magnate. He gave away his successful company, the popular retail brand Giordano, to build a newspaper in defense of the freedoms that made his life possible. Lai could have fled the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong, but chose to stay, reasoning, “If I don’t stand up, who will?”
The way Lai’s case was conducted is morally obscene. He has been denied the right to choose his own lawyer. His lawyers have been harassed. His newspaper was forcibly closed. His staff was arrested and his assets frozen. The conviction merely formalizes a prosecution that has been underway for some time.
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Jimmy’s daughter, Claire, shared a list of the books Jimmy has read in custody. They are not light distractions. They are compact, demanding theological works – Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Guardini, Ratzinger, Franciscus, Van Thuan (himself a prisoner of communist Vietnam). These are the companions of a man who is not looking for comfort, but for endurance.
Jimmy’s relationship with Claire reminds me of another imprisoned conscience: St. Thomas More, imprisoned in the Tower of London for refusing to betray his faith and flatter an autocrat. More’s letters to his daughter Meg are among the clearest prison writings in the Western tradition: tender, playful, disciplined and completely free.
More, of course, became one of the most enduring symbols in the history of resistance against despotic oppression. We have to hope the same goes for Jimmy Lai.
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The Chinese Communist Party insists that the Lai case is an internal matter outside the concern of the international community. But Hong Kong’s autonomy was guaranteed by a treaty. His freedoms were promised to the world. The destruction of the rule of law is not a domestic issue; it is a breach of trust with global consequences.
And its chilling effect will extend far beyond Lai’s prison cell. Journalists and teachers will practice self-censorship. Priests will wonder which homily could cross an invisible line. Students are not taught how to argue, but how to survive.
The way Lai’s case was conducted is morally obscene. He has been denied the right to choose his own lawyer. His lawyers have been harassed. His newspaper was forcibly closed.
This is the logic of totalitarianism: it does not need to imprison everyone. It just needs to jail the right people – publicly, brutally and decisively, so that the rest internalize the lesson.
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Therefore, the protest against Lai’s sentence cannot be ritualistic or half-hearted. It must be sustainable and morally powerful. Western governments cannot content themselves with statements of ‘concern’. They must regard this as a defining test and respond accordingly: high-level public advocacy. Real diplomatic pressure. Support for Hong Kong’s exiled journalists and institutions.
There is reason – however fragile – for hope. President Donald Trump has expressed interest in Lai’s case and is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in April. Do not put your trust in princes, the Psalms tell us, but history often turns unexpectedly at such moments.
In my conversations with Jimmy over the years, what always struck me was not anger, but joy. Not bitterness, but gratitude. He spoke of freedom as a gift. He talked about faith as a relationship. He never imagined himself a hero. He simply refused to reveal what he had seen.
History is full of such figures: men and women who tried to bury regimes only to find they had planted seeds.
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The sentence imposed on him should not be remembered as an act of strength, but as a confession of weakness.
Because when Jimmy Lai is remembered—when his name is spoken, his cause is championed, his courage is honored—a prison cell cannot contain his legacy.
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But if Jimmy Lai is forgotten, Hong Kong could disappear as a symbol of hope for China’s future democracy.
The regime will issue its verdict. History will write the judgment.
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