As Hong Kong’s world-famous media tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英) goes on trial this week for the crime of holding an opinion and believing others have right to an equal one, too, it is on the global business elite’s Xi Jinping fan club that a damning verdict will fall.
Imagine what Hong Kong businessperson Jimmy Lai could have been doing today had he not thrown his financial and intellectual weight behind people’s basic rights to express themselves and vote for those who rule them. He might have been plotting a portfolio expansion for his Vintage Hotels chain in the Asia-Pacific region or gliding on private jets between Hong Kong, London and Shanghai to leverage access to the Chinese market, raking in billions along the way.
Perhaps he would have been enjoying a panoramic retirement just a stone’s throw from Hong Kong’s once hotly desirable Victoria Harbor or lounging in luxury banquet halls, trading lucrative tips with David Solomon, James P. Gorman and Jane Fraser, the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, respectively, as they discuss the latest business opportunities Hong Kong has to offer, a thousand worlds away from its overcrowded penal system.
As a self-made billionaire who started his working life taking home a pittance in China’s Guangdong Province at the age of 9 before stowing away to Hong Kong, Lai had certainly earned himself space to choose the next step in his colorful life.
However, he realized that, for most of the scenarios above-listed, he would have had to transform the Apple Daily, the now-defunct, freedom of speech-loving newspaper he had founded in 1995, into an acquiescent partner of the Chinese Communist Party’s criminal dictatorship and turn his back on democracy.
This he refused to do, having dodged firebombs for his support of voting rights in the past. For his impertinence, he was therefore arrested, caged and presently finds himself, not for the first time, being shuttled in chains between the solitary confinement of a prison cell and a Hong Kong courtroom where the symbols of justice take precedence over its substance.
Spuriously charged with sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign forces and blocked from employing the lawyer of his preference, Lai has zero hope for a fair trial and little chance of ever meaningfully experiencing freedom again. Witnesses for his defense are allegedly being prevented from testifying as those for the prosecution are coerced to plant false narratives, while revelations of such shenanigans disappear from the local media, something that, ironically, would not have happened on his watch.
And yet, having given up access to greater pleasures than most of us could ever imagine for the hardships of a life in jail, Lai is still fighting for both his own rights and those of fellow Hong Kongers, a position that contrasts devastatingly with many figures in international business circles, who by turns fawn on and facilitate China President Xi Jinping’s actual and planned subjugation of more than a billion people.
For instance, when one would expect a self-proclaimed “freedom of speech absolutist” like Tesla boss Elon Musk to join the millions of others who demand liberation for Hong Kong, he instead wants to expand the city’s police state model to Taiwan.
Musk’s opposite number at Apple, Tim Cook, happily flicks the off switch for any tool that Chinese democracy defenders use to fight back against tyranny, while plugging holes in Beijing’s propaganda along the way. Competitors at Google closed down a game that put Hong Kong protesters in the hero role, too.
HSBC leaders hop around freezing the access of pro-democracy figures to their own money and pontificate on the need for other countries to deepen ties with China. Their Canadian counterparts at Manulife and Sun Life likewise block the pensions of Hong Kong exiles.
The U.S. National Basketball Association self-interestedly pressures and blackballs players who draw attention to human rights abuse in Hong Kong. Its athlete-entrepreneur LeBron James characterizes support for democracy in the city as ignorant and “physically, emotionally, spiritually” harmful.
Starbucks still stands by Maxim’s as its local brand purveyor, even though one of the main beneficiaries of the deal has used her privilege to denounce Hong Kong protesters to the United Nations Human Rights Council and reportedly leaned on a school she founded to expel students who boycotted classes to oppose Chinese Communist Party rule.
Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman and Black Rock’s Larry Fink paid thousands of dollars for the privilege of applauding Xi Jinping at an upmarket bash in California, as Hong Kong activists outside the venue were threatened with being dropped unconscious at the Chinese embassy by pro-Beijing thugs.
And Disney platformed the fake Mulan Crystal Liu Yifei (劉亦菲) to play dress-up at the scene of suspected crimes against humanity in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) and spout messages of support for Hong Kong police officers, as the latter dragged the “real Mulan,” democracy activist and politician Agnes Chow Ting (周庭), into a prison cell.
Unlike Lai, none of these corporate heavyweights would risk their freedom if they took a principled stand on China and its treatment of Hong Kong. Also, unlike Lai, their exposure to Beijing’s tantrums is both partial and a choice made over years and decades in the interest of profit.
Indeed, these people and companies did not emerge under the shadow of China’s tyranny, but made conscious moves to cultivate its financial hold on them, and their defense of business interests at the expense of the people of Hong Kong fundamentally damages their legacy in comparison to Lai, who stood to lose more by speaking up for what he believed in but steadfastly went ahead to do so anyway.
For the Apple Daily founder has offered a glimpse at a world where the right to speak truth and vote upon its basis truly has a value that goes beyond money, the point at which it becomes unassailable to the Chinese Communist Party as to all. He has also inspired countless journalists and other individuals to take up a battle for human dignity that will outlive even the most wizardly of investment portfolios, movies, sports games or tech products.
Indeed, in several weeks’ time, when the pre-ordained guilty verdict rings out at the end of Lai’s trial, it will do so reflexively upon all the enablers who, to a greater or lesser degree, have allowed Hong Kong to become a stage for the charade of the charges against him. In contrast to some of his supposed peers, Lai has nothing to answer for.
Leave a Reply