Trump-Xi talks next week may decide activist Jimmy Lai’s fate
Pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai once hoped US President Donald Trump could help stop the imposition of a controversial national security law.
The law not only took effect but was also used to sentence him to 20 years in prison. Ahead of an anticipated trip by Trump to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping next week, Lai’s son said his family is now hoping that Trump can help secure his father’s release.
Lai, a prominent critic of Beijing, founded a pro-democracy newspaper that was shut down during a crackdown following the city’s massive anti-Government protests in 2019.
Observers say the former media mogul’s plight symbolises a decline in freedoms Beijing promised when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. In an interview with The Associated Press, Sebastien Lai said he fears the clock is ticking for his 78-year-old father.
Trump is expected to discuss trade, the Iran war and Taiwan with Xi. But he said he is also planning to bring up Lai, telling conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, “there’s a little bitterness, I would say, with him and Jimmy Lai.” The younger Lai, 31, said his family is hopeful that Trump could help his father, adding that it’s easier to resolve than many of the other complex geopolitical issues the leaders will discuss.
He fears his father will die in prison, which would devastate the family and make him a martyr, he said. “It’s a lose-lose scenario for every single person,” he said. Trump has expressed sympathy for Jimmy Lai.
“I feel so badly,” he told reporters in December after Lai was found guilty of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiring with others to publish seditious articles. He had raised Lai’s case during his October meeting with Xi. Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, which advocates for Lai’s release, said people briefed on the October meeting told him that Xi and his staff “noted” Trump’s remarks without pushing back aggressively. Clifford said that suggested they’re willing to talk.
Clifford added that Trump had instructed US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to raise Lai’s release in last June’s trade talks with China, according to his source.
Bessent again mentioned Trump’s desire to free Lai in a recent meeting with Chinese representatives, who acknowledged it without much comment, Clifford said, citing someone with direct knowledge. “It is positive that senior Chinese officials have stopped pushing back on the issue,” he said. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.
In public, though, Beijing has remained tough on Lai. In March, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun called him the mastermind behind the riots that shook the city in 2019.
The spokesperson’s office of the ministry didn’t directly answer a question about whether China would consider releasing Lai, saying that Hong Kong issues are internal affairs and foreign interference is not allowed.
