I spoke to Jimmy Lai (黎智英) at least ten times about leaving Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020. First time was during the early stages of the political fight and demonstrations over the 2018 Extradition Treaty, or what many in Hong Kong called the “Get Jimmy Lai Law.” I told the boss he could just as effectively run Apple Daily from Taiwan as he could Hong Kong. Now both of us knew that wasn’t true, but if he was looking for an out, I was going to try to provide it.
Of course, as we know, he didn’t take the out, nor the many other times I pushed him to leave did he even once think about departing, as far as I can tell. In fact, most of the time he would turn it on me or bring up other people who he thought should depart.
Jimmy Lai stayed, knew he was going to prison and knew he was guilty as soon as they charged him. The kangaroo court he now finds himself in is no surprise to him. Jimmy is unique among the vast majority of those on trial in Hong Kong. He is from China and has been dealing with the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) his entire life. Jimmy had no illusions of who he was up against.
I’ve spent a lot of time, maybe 30 years, working with different dissident groups, and there is what I call the “Dissident Olympics.” This may sound a bit cynical, but at times there is a competition among political activists to claim who is more oppressed. The logic being the greater the oppression, the more serious a dissident can be regarded by the international community. Jimmy Lai never had to play the game.
Jimmy Lai owned the largest news media company in Hong Kong, had the largest footprint of any Chinese news group, other than the Chinese government, outside of Hong Kong, and was both pro-democracy in his personal outlook and in how he ran his media company. Bluntly speaking, there’s not even a close second in terms of the threat to the C.C.P. that Jimmy Lai represented.
These past two weeks in court, the three judges trying Mr. Lai have become prosecutors. The intensity to which the judges, who are working as prosecutors, and the actual prosecutors, are trying to break Jimmy on the stand is outside the practice of Hong Kong courts and memory of legal professionals watching the trial. Breaking Jimmy Lai is everything.
A conviction and a long sentence were preordained the day he was arrested. Yet what wasn’t preordained, and what the C.C.P. fully understands, is that finding Jimmy Lai guilty isn’t what they need. They must crush him. It is that attempt we have been seeing since his move into solitary confinement, the attempt to taint him with bogus fraud charges and the bizarre efforts to separate him from his international legal team, as it is through that team and his friends outside that Jimmy is still scoring hits against the Hong Kong regime.
The actions against Jimmy Lai range from massive, such as the stealing of his media empire, to the petty, like the forced move of his family out of their home to smaller quarters. When they perp-walked Jimmy through the Apple Daily newsroom in late August of 2020, it was not just a message to the Apple Daily staff, it was a show for Hong Kong and China elites that the Party rules, and everyone can be crushed. Even the continued fake tie-ins of Jimmy to the West, especially the United States, are not as much about collusion but rather a message to all in China: The United States can’t help you.
The goal all along of the Hong Kong government has been to push Jimmy down into some dark deep cell where he’ll never be heard from again. It’s not going to happen.
Jimmy’s not forgotten, he is now at the top of the dissident mountain and the most recognizable symbol of Hong Kong. Without a doubt, Jimmy Lai is the most well-known political dissident in Asia, and possibly the world. A guilty verdict won’t change that, in fact it will probably enhance his position. As such the prosecutors and the judges are doing all they can to strip him of the legitimacy that the world has inferred upon him. It’s not working.
Jimmy will leave Hong Kong. We discussed multiple times in 2020, and even when he was briefly on bail at home over Christmas of that year, how long Apple Daily could last. With Apple gone there would be nothing to defend, as a free press would be gone. Recall that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange blocked my moves to shift shares into a position to sell, as we had talks ongoing with foreign investors the first few months of 2021.
At this point I think of former Singapore prime minister Lee Kwan Yew (李光耀), who I met several times. Lee would think Hong Kong has trapped itself with Jimmy Lai. So what would Lee say about how Hong Kong could end this and get back to focusing on the economy? Kick Mr. Lai out. Convict him and give him the boot. He turns 77 on December 8.
Mark Simon is former group director for Next Digital, parent company for Apple Daily.
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