Jimmy Lai’s extraordinary struggle for freedom
At the opening of a documentary on the life of Jimmy Lai, pronounced “Lie,” we hear words from a Chinese proverb. “If you are a bird, you would rather die singing than living a quiet life.”
Lai was never destined to live a quiet life, as we learn in “The Hong Konger: Jimmy Lai’s Extraordinary Struggle for Freedom,” released in 2022 by Acton Films. He was born in China in 1948, the son of a successful businessman. The next year, the Communists under Mao Zedong overthrew the government.
Businessmen were the enemy. Lai’s father is not mentioned in the film, but apparently he escaped, and his mother was put in a labor camp. Their children got by however they could. Among other things, Lai carried luggage for tips in the railway station, and tells a story of being given a chocolate bar by one passenger. “Where are you from?” asked the boy, after taking a bite. “It must be heaven.” The man answered, “Hong Kong.”
Lai , age 12, stowed away on a Chinese fishing boat and made it to Hong Kong, an island off mainland China and then a British colony. He began work immediately in a factory, but he says “it was a very happy time.” He tears up telling this as an adult, “I knew I had a future.”
In 1898, Hong Kong had been acquired by Great Britain from China on a 99-year lease. It was not much more than a fishing village until the end of World War ll, when immigrants from mainland China came in great numbers. As colonial subjects, these immigrants did not have the right to vote, but they had all the supportive institutions of a democracy: the rule of law, free speech, and a free market. They wanted to work. In short order, they transformed Hong Kong, which had no natural resources and was “basically a pile of rock in the South China Sea,” as one commenter describes it, into a thriving modern city.
Hard-working, risk-taking Lai moved ahead in business. He started a clothing line that became very successful selling its product in China. He assumed that China would become more like the West. It would become a free market economy, with individual rights, rather than a government-controlled economy.
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Lai was not the only one who thought that mainland China would expand rights. After Mao died, there was a period of political uncertainty. Protests sprang up, with protestors wanting various reforms including an end to Communist Party corruption, guarantees for workers’ rights and for free speech and control of inflation. Party leadership debated between reconciliation and suppression. The latter view prevailed. Estimates of people killed range from hundreds to thousands, with the Army suppression centered on Tiananmen Square in June of 1989.
The people of Hong Kong, who had always considered themselves Chinese, largely supported the protestors. After Tiananmen Square, they begin to see themselves differently, as Hong Kongers. Lai was shocked by the killing of students, of “children.”
“All of a sudden, it was if my mother was calling in the darkness of the night. And my heart opened up.” He decided to start a new venture.
“If I go into the media business, I deliver choices, and choice is freedom.” He started a newspaper, Apple Daily, the only pro-democracy newspaper printed in Chinese. It was very successful.
The 99-year lease by which Great Britain controlled Hong Kong was due to expire in 1997. Lai, as publisher of a paper very critical of Chinese Communist leadership, could not help worrying about his fate after the takeover, the likelihood of arrest. He had always been “pro-religion,” stated one of the film’s commenters, “but like a lot of Chinese, didn’t have any religion.” His wife, Teresa, was a devout Catholic, and he had attended her church for years. A priest friend speculated that he found in Teresa’s faith “a stability, a reason to see the moral purpose of his life.” He decided to become baptized. “Whenever I am in crisis,” he said about that decision, “I feel I am going to be okay. I live in grace. This is what faith gave me.”
In 1997, Great Britain handed Hong Kong to the Chinese Communist Party. The island was promised autonomy for 50 years. The predominant view, the hope, was that China would evolve in those fifty years to become more democratic.
There were immediate signs that the Party was not going to allow autonomy. You can have the vote, said the Party, but we will provide the candidates. Protests began slowly. With the proposed 2019 Extradition Law, which said that anyone who violated a law could be taken to mainland China for jail and sentencing, more and more people joined protests. At one point, two million people, on an island of seven million, were protesting. Lai and other leaders preached non-violence. We can only have “real victory,” he said, “if it is built on the presence of peace, love and our moral power.” China withdrew the Extradition Law.
The next year, 2020, the Party passed the National Security Law, which set up, as one commentator described, “special courts, special police to operate in any situation that the CCP decides is a threat to Chinese National Security.” Any criticism could be labeled criminal. “It is a foregone conclusion that you will be convicted,” stated another commenter.
Lai said, “It is impossible for media to survive. Whatever we say can be labeled subversive.” He knew he would be arrested. He could have left Hong Kong, but “I came here without anything. Anything I have is this place. I owe freedom my life.” He stayed.
In that same year, Lai was arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison.
The documentary was released in 2022. Last month, Lai, in prison, was sentenced to 20 additional years. As a 78-year-old diabetic, that is essentially a life sentence.
His family and supporters continue to call for his release. They do not give up hope.
(Anne Bevilacqua lives in Haywood County.)
