Jimmy Lai, a prominent media billionaire and staunch advocate for democracy, now faces life imprisonment in Hong Kong after being convicted of national security offenses. Now, at 78 years old, Lai has been incarcerated for the past two years. On the front lines there, he recently reconnected with fellow inmate Raphael Wong and Figo Chan at Stanley prison. Lai has refused to be swayed from his convictions, even as his health continues to deteriorate. To this day he has denied the felonious charges he was convicted on.
Lai was born in what is now mainland China. His life changed drastically with the arrival of the news that his father had escaped to Hong Kong, leaving little Jimmy behind. Once he was reunited with his family at age 12, he began amassing a personal business empire. His first big entrepreneurial success arrived in 1993 with the successful start-up of the highly innovative magazine Next. Fast forward one year later, and we find the same leader circulating an open letter. In it, he directly challenged Li Peng—the same Li Peng notoriously dubbed “the Butcher of Beijing.” Lai’s dramatic gambit was a sure sign of his increasing impatience with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It laid the groundwork for all of his follow-up efforts.
In 1995, Lai founded the now-defunct Apple Daily, which became known as the outspoken press freedom bastion of Hong Kong. His then-outspoken criticism of the CCP reached a feverish high during the 2019 protests. That’s when he was able to meet with then Vice-President Mike Pence to discuss the escalating situation in Hong Kong. Lai’s editorial team was instructed to “urge people to take to the streets,” according to Cheung Kim-hung, a former chief executive of Apple Daily’s parent company. This was a political awakening and one of the proudest moments in Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy.
Lai’s passionate opposition to the CCP came from deeply held convictions. He had said at one point, “If I just continue to make money, that means nothing to me. But as long as I’m operating the media business, then I’m actually providing information, which is discovery and choice, and choice is freedom.” This belief drove him all his life and shaped his outlook on the world. Maybe the most important moment for Lai was when he was given a copy of Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.” This reading helped to intensify his deep-seated hatred for authoritarianism.
Even after all of these successes, Lai was still haunted by the trauma of his early childhood. He shared horrific memories of being publicly shamed where he and his sisters had to watch their mother get humiliated. “My tears flowed freely and wet my shirt. I dared not make a move. My body was burning with humiliation,” he wrote decades later. It’s experiences like these that forged his pursuit of the individual freedoms and democratic ideals he would later fight for.
In his later years, Lai was fiercely dedicated to preserving the memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was a frequent participant at the annual vigils commemorating those who were killed during the 1989 protests. This commitment went above and beyond and crystallized his long-standing personal commitment to democracy and human rights.
Lai is now fighting life-threatening complications due to diabetes. His family has been advocating for his release, emphasizing that continued incarceration will only further jeopardize his health. His legal battles have caused these proceedings to receive international scrutiny. Supporters have promptly dubbed him a martyr for free speech for all of Hong Kong.
Throughout his trial, Lai repeatedly asserted that he had never called for violence or illegal behavior. “Never,” he had said when faced with serious charges against him, arguing instead that he had always promoted values he believed were intrinsic to Hong Kong: “rule of law, freedom, pursuit of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly.”
His arrest and subsequent conviction are part of a darkening reality in Hong Kong, where the government is cracking down on dissent. The Chinese government’s heavy-handed response to Lai’s activism is epitomized by its escalating efforts to quash dissent domestically. As Lai himself lamented just hours before his arrest in 2020, “I got everything I have because of this place… This is my redemption.”