Jimmy Lai’s sentence, China’s chilling message

The sentencing of Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison under a draconian national security law mirrors the political trajectory of the city that made him a hero. A Hong Kong court described the 78-year-old media tycoon’s offences — conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and publication of seditious materials — as “grave” and “premeditated”. Yet, by all accounts, his real crime has been the relentless championing of democracy. Lai, already in prison for the past five years after being convicted for “fraud” and organising “illegal” protests, has a long record of advocacy. Media outlets founded and run by him, notably Next Magazine and Apple Daily, retained their forthright pro-democracy line for three decades until they were forcibly shut down in 2021. Both were at the forefront of major protests in 2003, 2014, and again in 2019, when opposition to a proposed extradition bill grew into a pro-democracy uprising. That was all the pretext Beijing needed to unleash the 2020 national security law that sealed Lai’s fate.

The extraordinarily harsh sentence for Lai is the final nail in the coffin of the “One Country, Two Systems” promise to Hong Kong for at least 50 years when it was transferred from Britain to China in 1997. Hong Kong’s autonomy, with its free-market economy, legal system, and civil liberties, was to be protected from the Communist Party. This autonomy has been under constant strain, as Beijing has repeatedly moved to criminalise dissent, overhaul the electoral system to prop up friendly leaders, suppress the press, and exert control over the justice system. Lai’s own trial was conducted without a jury, and he was denied a lawyer of his choosing . The treatment meted out to him is Beijing’s warning to those still willing to fight for freedom that they do so at their own peril.

As the nearly 80-year-old Lai prepares to spend what is likely the remainder of his life behind bars, it would seem that the embers of Hong Kong’s democracy are fading. The Communist Party’s hostile takeover is unlikely to end at the city. If it is Hong Kong today, it could be Taiwan tomorrow. With Xi Jinping tightening his grip on power, illustrated by his sweeping purge of the military, China’s authoritarianism is on the march.