As the trial of Jimmy Lai enters the final stages in Hong Kong, supporters, friends, and family of the jailed newspaper publisher remain hopeful of his eventual release from prison.
Jimmy Lai. Image via Doughty Street Chambers.
Lai, who has been in prison — mostly solitary confinement — since 2020 on a range of charges, faces a potential life sentence if convicted of sedition under the terms of the territory’s National Security Law, imposed on the special administrative region by the mainland government that year.
The consensus among those closest to Lai is that a conviction is almost inevitable.
And with the 77-year-old publisher’s health known to be in serious decline, there are reasonable concerns that Lai could die in solitary confinement.
Yet some close to the case have signaled their optimism that a guilty verdict in Lai’s trial could actually clear the way for his release. But how reasonable are those hopes?
And could it be that Lai’s best hopes for release actually lie with the mainland government in Beijing?
—
Mark Simon, a close friend of Lai’s and a former senior executive at his shuttered newspaper Apple Daily, told The Pillar this week that the government authorities should be reasonably worried that allowing Lai to die in prison would in popular imagination turn him into a martyr for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, and an enduring symbol of Beijing’s erosion of civil liberties in the territory.
As Simon pointed out, the status of Hong Kong as an international business center has suffered as a result of the draconian policing of speech in the territory since the 2019 pro-democracy protests. And the corporate world is not unaware that the first case filed against Lai — which led to the shuttering of his business — concerned specious allegations regarding the terms of the company’s building lease.
Confidence in Hong Kong as a safe place to do business has been eroded alongside civil liberties, bringing with it real economic costs. It is reasonable to assume that, somewhere within the government, there is a pragmatic assessment being made of the cost/benefit of Lai’s perpetual imprisonment.
Intuitively, one would expect that assessment to be made close to the ground in Hong Kong, where the political and economic pressures of the case are most keenly felt.
But, ironically, although the mainland government essentially created the current Lai case through the imposition of the 2020 National Security Law, it seems to be local authorities who have proven most committed to hounding Lai in the courts and keeping him behind bars. Meanwhile, it could be Beijing which ultimately decides the local handling of the case has caused national and international headaches and decides to step in.
A casual assumption among followers of Lai’s case can often be that the Hong Kong authorities, most notably chief executive John Lee and local security minister Chris Tang, are essentially puppets of the mainland government.
To a degree, this is understandable, given how Lee came to office. Lee — also a Catholic — was “elected” in an non-democratic process in 2023 after standing unopposed as the sole mainland approved candidate, having previously served as security minister.
In that previous role, Lee was the prime mover of the failed 2019 bill to allow the extradition of political detainees from Hong Kong to stand trial on the mainland, despite the territory’s separate legal and judicial systems.
That bill triggered widespread protests, leading to a draconian police crackdown under Lee, and which were used by him to convince the mainland government to impose the 2020 National Security Law on the territory.
Since his election, Lee has argued vigorously for enhanced security powers and defended sweeping crackdowns on “seditious speech” in Hong Kong, including the arrest and prosecution for treason of t-shirt vendors and graffitists over slogans like “free Hong Kong.”
Lee’s administration has also overseen the arrest and prosecution of notable Catholics in the territory apart from Lai, including Cardinal Joseph Zen and the former chairwoman of the Diocese of Hong Kong’s Justice and Peace Commission, and forced into fugitive exile the Catholic pro-democracy campaigner Anges Chow.
According to locals, Lee’s administration has effectively converted the local government into a kind of police state, with officials hunting for cases in which they can deploy the beefed up laws and policing resources which they have insisted are essential to Hong Kong’s political stability.
In Lai’s trial, the mainland government has — rather than involving itself directly — stood back, declining to resolve appeals over the interpretation of the National Security Law and allowed Lee a free hand to proceed as he sees fit.
Some senior Catholics in Hong Kong suggest that, despite the territory’s legal singularity and international prominence, the situation is actually similar to that of the mainland, where enforcement of security measures, especially when it involves issues of free speech and religion, often reflects the personalities and priorities of senior regional authorities rather than central government policy.
In this context, then, there is a reasonable argument to be made that once Lai’s case is concluded — presumably with a conviction — Beijing might be moved to intervene, since there would no longer be a question of his guilt (at least on paper) or of interfering in Lee’s exercise of office.
Instead, the thinking goes, the question of Lai’s continued imprisonment could become a purely political matter, with a move to release him and allow him to go into exile being presented as a kind of “clemency” given his age and medical condition, and as a relatively cost-effective diplomatic gesture in ongoing negotiations with Western governments.
Practically speaking, this metric might make sense. The Chinese economy remains mired in the fallout of the implosion of the property market at home and battles with the Trump administration on tariffs. The health of the Hong Kong economy as a center for international business is of national concern, as too is China’s ability to export to Western markets.
Locally, Lai’s release and departure from Hong Kong would not restart his newspaper Apple Daily, nor would it leave Hong Kongers in any doubt that what was done to him could be done to anyone, should the government choose to do so.
Conversely, as Simon noted to The Pillar, allowing Lai to die a martyr in prison could harden opposition to the Lee administration and cement international impressions that Hong Kong isn’t a safe place to do business.
Some close to the case have noted that Lai’s treatment has, at times, appeared to be more of a personal vendetta by the chief executive, dating back to the 2019 protests. But if Lee is unable to put personal animus aside in Lai’s case, it is entirely possible that the mainland government might question the chief executive’s judgement, and consider the merits of letting Lai go.
