Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong activist for democracy and political prisoner

On Monday, February 9, Jimmy Lai, long-time activist for democracy in Hong Kong against China’s iron political grip, was sentenced to twenty years in prison for two counts of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” and one count of publishing “seditious materials.”

Mr Lai, a devout Catholic, is 78-years-old, so he is likely to die in prison unless international pressure forces China’s hand to release him. Attempts have been made to apply just such pressure on China by the U. S., Great Britain, Australia, the E. U., Japan, Taiwan, and the United Nations, all to no avail. President Trump asked Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to “consider” releasing Lai. U. S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of Lai’s imprisonment: “Mr Lai and his family have suffered enough. The United States urges the authorities to grant Mr. Lai humanitarian parole.” UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper promised that England will continue to press China for Mr. Lai’s freedom. Jimmy Lai is a British citizen.

Who is Jimmy Lai? Lai was born Lai Chee-ying in 1947 in China to a wealthy family just prior to the Communist takeover in 1949. Lai escaped to Hong Kong, then under British control, at the age of twelve, and made his way with jobs in the garment disctrict. In 1981, Lai founded the fashion giant Giordano, becoming one of the wealthiest men in Asia, and in the world. Leaving fashion for politics and media, Lai founded Next Magazine and Apple Daily, two publications that appealed to a wide audience in Hong Kong.

It was Tiananmen Square that turned Lai into an advocate for democracy. He turned his media outlets into ones that regularly criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He became an even greater advocate for free speech and democracy in Hong Kong after the British moved out and the CCP took control in 1997. The agreement between Britain and China was supposed to give Hong Kong fifty years of autonomy so it could continue to prosper as an oasis of capitalism in Asia. But the CCP broke that agreement and began implementing serious restrictions on speech and political activity in Hong Kong. To make a long story short, Lai’s outspoken criticism of the CCP and leadership in the democracy movement made him a target of the CCP. In 2020, shortly after the CCP imposed a new security law in Hong Kong intended to shut down criticism, Mr. Lai was arrested and has been in prison since. These newest developments only confirm China’s intent to shut Jimmy Lai up and all who dare to criticize the CCP.

China’s ruling Communist Party is a ruthless, regime that cares about one thing, and one thing only: absolute control of the people of China. That includes Hong Kong now and, if they get their way eventually, Taiwan. Xi Jinping and the other autocrats in Beijing care little about what the rest of the world thinks about their represive policies, because they know that the economic market they control is too large and too tempting for Westerners to resist. The list of human rights abuses is long: imprisoning people for political crimes, then killing them to harvest their organs and sell them on the black market, persecution of the Uyghurs, forced abortions and sterilizations, a surveillance state that watches nearly every move citizens make, suppression of religion, suppression of free speech, suppression of political dissent. Yet, the Western economies drool over the opportunity to do business in China because of its massive market, easily the largest in the world. The profits to be gained by selling products to China, even in the face of China’s unfair trade practices, are simply too great for Western companies to turn away from. Even sports programs, whose players and coaches rant and rave over injustices committed in the United States, are only too happy to exploit the money that can be made in China, so they dutifully keep their mouths shut about abuses in that communist country.

Even the Catholic Church has been criticized for being too accommodating to the CCP. Pope Francis negotiated a deal with the CCP that allowed the pope some say on the naming of bishops in the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church, the “church” created by the CCP as a state-approved alternative to the now underground Catholic Church that remains loyal to the pope. But the Chinese government regularly breaks the deal with the pope, naming their church’s bishops with little or no consideration for the pope, much less his approval. Many have questioned why the Vatican allows the CCP to basically run roughshod over its authority to name bishops. The conventional wisdom seems to be that the Vatican wants to keep a door open and a foot in that door in anticipation of the day when the CCP will fall out of favor and the people will finally rise up and depose their oppressors. Maybe. Maybe not. In the meantime, those Catholics who have shown remarkable loyalty to the Holy Father in Rome have, to more than a little extent, been shut out by all sides. Doubtless, the CCP feels powerful enough to toss the Vatican around at will, while I suppose those making the decisions regarding Catholic-China relations are thinking of the long haul. Of course, that long haul thinking does little to comfort those currently forced to worship underground, who still watch their pastors and priests taken away and not heard from again.

Jimmy Lai is only the most recent in a long list of victims of the CCP regime. Others who worked with/for Mr. Lai were also charged, tried, and convicted. Their crime seems to be wanting what we in the U. S. take for granted: a voice in our government, the right to assemble peacefully, the right to criticize our leaders, and the right to worship God as we understand Him. The CCP cannot allow these rights because each is regarded as a threat to their total control. We the people have little hope of persuading China to free Mr. Lai. Even our leaders seem to have little hope of succeeding in doing so. Perhaps our Western companies and sports programs could refuse to do business with China until they clean up their human rights abuses. Honestly, that is not going to happen. Because as often as the celebrity and business class virtue signal about their concern for so many worthy causes, the freedom and human rights of the people of China and Hong Kong are not among those worthy causes.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.