Jimmy Lai is risking everything for democracy.We can’t ignore what China is doing

The U.S.urged China to reverse what Secretary of State Marco Rubio called an “unjust and tragic” sentence against Hong Kong publisher and democracy activist Jimmy Lai.(Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images)

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Lai’s severe20-year sentence is designedto teach a lesson: that in today’s Hong Kong, conscience is subversion;that loyalty to truth is treason;that even peaceful dissent will be crushed without apology.

Lai came to Hong Kong as a penniless refugee.He began life as a child laborer before eventually becoming a garment tycoon.He gave away his successful business, the popular Giordano retail brand, to build a newspaper to defend the liberties that made his life possible.Lai could have fled China’s takeover of Hong Kong, but chose to stay, reasoning: “If I don’t stand up, who will?”

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The manner in which Lai’s case has been conducted is morally obscene.He has been denied the right to choose his own legal counsel.His lawyers have been harassed.His newspaper was shuttered by force.His staff were arrested, his assets frozen.The sentencing merely formalizes a persecution that has been ongoing for some time.

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Jimmy’s daughter, Claire, shared with me a list of the books Jimmy has been reading in custody.They are not light diversions.They are dense, demanding theological works—Augustine, Aquinas, Guardini, Ratzinger, Francis, Van Thuan (himself a prisoner of communist Vietnam).These are the companions of a man seeking not comfort, but endurance.

Jimmy’s relationship with Claire reminds me of another imprisoned conscience: St.Thomas More, locked in the Tower of London for refusing to betray his faith and flatter an autocrat.More’s letters to his daughter Meg are among the most luminous prison writings in Western tradition — tender, playful, disciplined and utterly free.

More, of course, became one of history’s most enduring symbols of resistance to despotic repression.We must hope the same becomes true of Jimmy Lai.

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The Chinese Communist Party insists that Lai’s case is an internal matter, beyond the concern of the international community.But Hong Kong’s autonomy was guaranteed by treaty.Its freedoms were promised to the world.The destruction of its rule of law is not domestic housekeeping;it is a breach of trust with global consequences.

And its chilling effect will extend far beyond Lai’s prison cell.Journalists and teachers will self-censor.Priests will wonder which homily might cross an invisible line.Students will learn not how to argue, but how to survive.

The manner in which Lai’s case has been conducted is morally obscene.He has been denied the right to choose his own legal counsel.His lawyers have been harassed.His newspaper was shuttered by force.

This is thelogic of totalitarianism: it does not need to imprison everyone.It only needs to imprison the right people — publicly, brutally and decisively, so the rest internalize the lesson.

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That is why protest against Lai’s sentence cannot be ritualistic or half-hearted.It must be sustained and morally vigorous.Western governments cannot content themselves with statements of “concern.” They must treat this as a defining test and respond accordingly: public, high-level advocacy.Real diplomatic pressure.Support for Hong Kong’s exiled journalists and institutions.

There is reason — however fragile — for hope.PresidentDonald Trumphas taken a vocal interest in Lai’s case and is expected to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping in April.Place not one’s trust in princes, the Psalms tell us, but history often unexpectedly turns on such moments.

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In my conversations with Jimmy over the years, what always struck me was not anger, but joy.Not bitterness, but gratitude.He spoke aboutfreedom as a gift.He spoke about faith as a relationship.He never imagined himself a hero.He simply refused to betray what he had seen.

Jimmy Lai taking a photo with Texas Republican Sen.Ted Cruz.

History is full of such figures: men and women whom regimes tried to bury, only to discover they had planted seeds.