When China decided it would transform democracy into a crime in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, it immediately went hunting for a figurehead to convict. What it needed was a human monstrosity, an individual so abominably nefarious that even freedom lovers around the world would come to see that Beijing had to step in to curb his or her power.
That person did not exist, so, at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party, Hong Kong authorities and their counterparts in the mainland were tasked to fill in the gap and make one up. The target individual had to be influential, internationally connected and unequivocally linked to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
The obvious candidate was businessperson Jimmy Lai (黎智英), the billionaire owner of the now-defunct, pro-democracy Apple Daily news media and a big-hearted supporter of civil society. He had offended the self-appointed rulers of China and Hong Kong by suggesting that there should be consequences for their denial and abuse of human rights and by throwing his weight behind people’s right to vote.
Having now conjured a bogeyman, authorities had to do likewise with a backstory to convince everybody else that Lai truly is as horrendous as authorities wish him to be. To do so, they detained several of his former staff at Apple Daily and threatened them with the possibility of never leaving prison again unless they became “accomplice witnesses” and provided evidence conforming to China’s narrative. Manufacturing yet more testimony, they also appear to have tortured a young man named Andy Li (李宇軒) in a Chinese prison. Then, prosecutors took what they had to trial, presenting a series of ludicrously unincriminating “evidence” to three pre-selected judges whose intended role is to nod their heads.
Here, however, things began to get interesting: In between implying that following certain people on Twitter (now X) or inviting overseas individuals to observe elections are acts of collusion, prosecutors drew testimony from the accomplice witnesses — hereafter, more accurately termed as hostage witnesses — to the effect that Lai was a penthouse tyrant, wielding his power to hire and fire whomever he pleased at Apple Daily in order to dictatorially impose a pro-democratic editorial regime.
Through this “birdcage democracy,” he called for sanctions against Hong Kong leaders and turned the city’s people against a police force that they otherwise would have adored even as its officers clubbed them over the head. Through this one-man media megaphone, the Hong Kong public was manipulated and radicalized into holding certain points of view that they would not have organically come to of their own accord.
Unfortunately for the poor prosecutors, even having combed through reams of Lai’s often mild-mannered personal communication and cherry-picked the snippets that best conformed to their storyboard, the chain of events did not compellingly join together. Therefore, through the hostage witnesses, they painted the picture that Lai did not always need to directly order people to write what he wanted. His force of will was so overbearingly strong that it did not need to be communicated directly. People hierarchically beneath him could not avoid but to know what he wanted and carried out his intentions accordingly, in a climate of fear.
Now, where on Earth could the prosecutors and authorities possibly have found the model for this demon? What autocratic entity is there to inspire them, whose imposition of its opinions on others is so ruthless that they parrot its viewpoints in a state of terror about what will happen to them if they refuse? Who is the compass-in-chief operating a system of incontrovertible and invisible red lines that everybody knows to exist even when they have not been explicitly defined? Which hierarchy has cowed every editor, journalist, cartoonist, satirist and social media platform so comprehensively that only content reinforcing its undisputed continuation is permitted to be seen by a manipulated public?
You got it! The Chinese Communist Party! And even in the unlikely circumstances that life under Lai at the Apple Daily was truly like has been (forgivably) described by witnesses under enormous duress, staff at the media could simply have quit, worked for other outlets, created their own or retrained to another profession, while readers likewise could choose another source of information. That is, at least when other media still existed.
Such luxuries are far less possible under totalitarian party rule, whereby every workplace in every industry has to accord with its twisted worldview, which is pumped through every news and social media under Beijing’s unforgiving gaze. Nor do the penalties for contradicting that worldview stop at a person losing their job. Rather, they include the future that Lai — a rare example of a person who put his principles before his riches — may sadly face if Hong Kong continues its mainlandization: dying a prisoner in conditions that amount to torture after the deliberate denial of medical care.
Thus, in creating a fictional Jimmy Lai to demonize, the Chinese Communist Party has carelessly and mistruthfully characterized a much lighter version of itself. If Lai deserves a life behind bars, one wonders what punishment would be appropriate for its leaders.
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