There are many things that Xi Jinping-era Beijing has proven terrible at: diplomatic human resource management, property markets, forced labor-free supply chains, neighborly relations, disease warnings, cover-ups of crimes against humanity and reliable economic indicators, to name but a few. One item, however, is not typically considered one of its weaknesses: show trials.
Quite the opposite, it has created the perfect environment for them to flourish. Mental and physical pain can be visited upon witnesses and suspects to bring their stories into line with a predetermined narrative; their families pressured. With no need for meaningful public input, the law is written and applied however the Chinese Communist Party pleases. People can be detained without trial for years at a time. And authorities routinely fix which lawyers represent which clients, while selecting judges to do the state’s bidding, too.
All of these conditions have been put in place to try Jimmy Lai (黎智英), a long-term icon of Hong Kong’s fight for democracy and the founder of the city’s once wildly popular, now shuttered, Apple Daily newspaper. A national security law has specifically been drafted as catch-all legislation to criminalize any form of protest, dissent or unfavorable news-reporting. “Accomplice witnesses” have been held in custody for years and are producing testimony under threat of never seeing freedom again, with a U.N. special rapporteur, Alice Jill Edwards, suspecting that one may have been tortured. Others who could have provided evidence from overseas have been reportedly blocked from doing so, and Lai has been denied his preferred choice of legal team. Hong Kong’s government-selected judges, Esther Toh Lye-ping (杜麗冰), Susana Maria D’Almada Remedios (李素蘭) and Alex Lee Wan-tang (李運騰), preside over the case.
Bringing these threads together ought to enable the Chinese Communist Party to present damningly bespoke evidence to the charges it has selected for Lai: conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiracy to publish seditious materials. That way, the great and the good of this world could pretend to believe that Hong Kong’s justice system still has some credibility and continue to work alongside the city’s authorities as if they were not throwing countless innocent people in jail, Lai among them.
Yet, even as Lai was detained for over 1,000 days while they prepared for his trial, Hong Kong prosecutors’ case against him oscillates between the cringeworthy and the ridiculous. By turns, he seems to be implicated as a criminal both for the alleged guiding of Apple Daily articles when he was out of prison and not guiding them when he was in prison. Any contact with foreign citizens, especially Americans, British and Japanese, or support for voices that advocate universal suffrage for Hong Kongers is taken as incriminating. Any newspaper article that might result in people realizing the importance of basic rights is conceived as a threat against the state.
As a result, since early January, the court for Lai’s show trial has been subjected to a barrage of circumstantial evidence that proves nothing beyond activities that were considered entirely normal in the Hong Kong of just four years ago and still are in much of the world: The Apple Daily’s editorial policy and Lai’s influence upon it was pro-democratic. The newspaper produced articles that its readership wanted to read and viewed Beijing’s COVID-19 response unflatteringly. It launched an English-language service aimed at the U.S. market that highlighted human rights suppression in China. In the hope of reaching an international audience, Lai created Twitter accounts, which followed figures that the Chinese Communist Party does not like and sometimes hashtagged Western politicians. Occasionally describing China President Xi Jinping as a dictator, he gave generous monetary support to several democratic parties and organizations. He sometimes spoke with foreigners, may have known the former Japanese legislator Shiori Yamao and once hosted former U.S. deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz and retired U.S. general Jack Keane on a program called “Live Chat With Jimmy Lai”. As has been in the public domain for nearly a decade, Wolfowitz, who is also chairman emeritus of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, was sometimes paid by Lai.
Flecks like these supposedly cobble together, not to describe relatively unremarkable contacts and behavior for a democratic billionaire philanthropist at the head of a business and media empire, but to demonstrate that Lai is the center of an international conspiracy hell-bent on wreaking havoc upon Hong Kong through actions like placing scare quotes in news headlines. They have been complemented by tellingly homogenous tittle-tattle that purports Lai to be a radicalized and inexorable individual throwing his weight around in an Apple Daily newsroom that had zero editorial autonomy in order to shove his personal agenda down the necks of pliable Hong Kongers and drum them up to protest as part of a U.S.-led war against China.
Perhaps because the portrait is disingenuous, testimony and submissions do not always match the script. When presented with defense evidence, former Apple Daily chief editor Yeung Ching-kee (楊清奇), an “accomplice witness,” could not convincingly deny that at least some degree of writer autonomy and plurality of opinion did exist under his watch, and messages calling for foreign support attributed to Lai by the prosecution are clearly aimed at saving Hong Kong from the abuse and regress of human rights, not destroying the city from within.
Meanwhile, during cross-questioning under the duress of a possible life sentence himself, Apple Daily’s last C.E.O., Cheung Kim-hung (張劍虹), explained that one target for young protesters whom Lai admired was “the police who used violence to suppress them at that time.” Facing similar pressure, the Apple Daily’s former associate publisher Chan Pui-man (陳沛敏) even stated that her former newspaper’s reports were in line with journalistic principles. She also confirmed that it produced constructive criticism of governance, i.e. precisely its democratic function.
Much emphasis during court proceedings has been placed on the publication of articles by high-profile pro-democracy exiles like Nathan Law (羅冠聰) or those which discussed possible sanctions against powerful Hong Kongers who were — and are — denying their fellow citizens basic rights. Lai had publicly appealed for the U.S. to freeze assets belonging to top Chinese officials as a peaceful method of effecting change to repressive laws and policies and also met with then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and other officials to discuss the situation in Hong Kong.
That mere talks with overseas politicians and expressions of opinion are being framed as collusion with foreign forces says more about the Chinese Communist Party’s determination to eradicate voices offering alternatives to its rule and its fear of being held economically accountable for its actions as it does any wrongdoing on Lai’s part. Incidentally, that fear extends to the trial judges, towards whom pressure is building for asset-freezes and travel bans to the U.S., too.
This begs a question: Given that everybody knows a guilty verdict for Lai is preordained, why didn’t Hong Kong concoct better evidence to convict him with? Put another way, knowing the flimsiness of their case, why are authorities drawing out their own embarrassment by presenting it over several weeks to an unconvinced global community that is now scrambling to get business away from the city?
For all the obvious answers like the Chinese Communist Party’s vindictiveness, desire to warn others and the inconveniences caused by Lai’s principled refusal to plead guilty, there may be other considerations. Ignoring the very different contexts of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol Building in comparison to the Hong Kong protests of 2019 and 2020, the examination of Lai’s social media use is very possibly designed so that parallels can be drawn with the indictment of Donald Trump, too. That way, China can appeal to those who live in the cloud cuckoo land where the justice systems of Hong Kong and America are identical.
On the other hand, instead of messages and strategy, what we may be receiving from the Jimmy Lai trial is the simple car wreck of a collision between the mainland Chinese justice system, which is not accustomed to oversight, and the bastardized remains of Hong Kong’s rule of law, which is incompetent at persuasively fabricating alternative truths.
Depending on its level of delusion, Beijing cannot be enjoying what it sees, even though it is obvious that the prosecution is hitting buzzwords in a desperate attempt to impress it. Hong Kong, however, will have more opportunities to hone its show trial skills when its supplemental national security legislation, known as Article 23, comes into force soon.
It is expected to target even readers who have old Apple Daily newspapers at home.
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