Hong Kong court convicts democracy advocate Lai

President Donald Trump 'said earlier this year that he would do everything he could to "save" Lai'

(Image credit: Anthony Wallace / AFP via Getty Images)

What happened

Hong Kong’s High Court today convicted media tycoon Jimmy Lai of violating the Chinese territory’s 2020 national security law and sedition, in the latest blow to the former British colony’s pummeled pro-democracy movement. The verdict was handed down a day after Hong Kong’s last major opposition party, the Democratic Party, voted to disband under intense pressure from the pro-Beijing government.

Who said what

The Lai verdict, carrying up to life in prison, highlights Hong Kong’s “shrinking tolerance for dissent,” The New York Times said. Officials in the city and mainland China had cast Lai, 78, as the “mastermind of antigovernment demonstrations that engulfed” Hong Kong in 2019, “posing a serious challenge to Beijing’s authority.” Lai said he was promoting the freedoms and autonomy promised by Beijing when Britain handed over governance of Hong Kong in 1997.

A rags-to-riches clothing magnate, Lai pivoted to media in the 1990s. His popular Apple Daily newspaper mixed “vivid” and “sometimes racy” journalism with “relentless criticism of China’s ruling Communist Party,” until Hong Kong’s government forced its closure in 2021, The Wall Street Journal said. President Donald Trump “said earlier this year that he would do everything he could to ‘save’ Lai,” but neither he nor Chinese President Xi Jinping “mentioned the case” after they met in South Korea in October.

What next?

The Hong Kong court said it will decide Lai’s sentence in mid-January. Trump said last year that “it would be ‘easy’ to free” Lai, said Mark L. Clifford in a New York Times op-ed, and he “should deliver on that boast by leveraging the global groundswell” of support for Lai and the “reduction of American tensions with China” to convince Xi to release the ailing freedom advocate.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.