Jimmy Lai’s Case Shows Hong Kong’s New Reality (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hi, welcome to the Global News Podcast on YouTube, where we go behind the headlines of a story and tell you why it really matters. I'm Ankur Desai, and today we're discussing China's crackdown on Hong Kong's dreams of democracy. Jimmy Lai, the media tycoon and activist, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. To discuss this, I've got my fellow Global News Podcast presenter and longtime China correspondent Celia Hatton alongside me. Celia, hello. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your expertise. So Jimmy Lai, tell us a bit about him and I guess his rise to prominence, a real rags to riches story.

[00:00:34] Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, we talk of Jimmy Lai because of his stance on democracy and Hong Kong. But actually, if you go back in time, he's been a name in Hong Kong for decades. And that's because he's kind of the definition of a self-made man. So he was actually born in mainland China, and he fled China right before the Communist Revolution. So he arrived in Hong Kong. The myth is that he arrived with just a bar of chocolate, nothing else. He was 12. And so he went to go and work in a clothing factory as a child laborer, spent years there working his way up to become a manager of a clothing factory. And then famously, he took his year end bonus from working in the factory and put it towards a defunct factory of his own and started his own clothing line and grew it into this absolutely massive brand that still exists today, Giordano, in 30 countries. He became the very definition of a Hong Kong success story. And that's something that's always been prized in Hong Kong. But then he decided to turn his attention to politics. And he sold a stake in Giordano and moved to establish what went on to become the biggest listed media company in Hong Kong, Next Digital. And at the heart of Next Digital was this newspaper called Apple Daily, which was the most read newspaper in Hong Kong. And it was kind of like this tabloid newspaper. It loved to poke fun at the authorities. Really at the heart of it was this kind of constant questioning, this constant push that when Hong Kong was handed back from the UK back to China, there was a promise that it would move towards democracy, that at one point, everybody in Hong Kong would get a vote. And this was a promise that the Chinese authorities had made to the British when Hong Kong was handed over. And Apple Daily never forgot that. Jimmy Lai never forgot that promise.

[00:02:29] Speaker 1: And then of course, he became a huge critic of the Chinese government and organised a lot of protests, which you covered a lot during your time there.

[00:02:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say he necessarily organised them, but he was definitely one of the people who fuelled them through his media company. And because he was such a well-known, very wealthy critic. So I remember back in 2014, I was covering the Umbrella Movement. These were protests that were symbolised by something that people carry around in Hong Kong a lot because it's so rainy, umbrellas. And I was interviewing a bunch of really young, excited students at the time. We were in the middle of Hong Kong, in central Hong Kong, that had been taken over by these huge protests. And I was interviewing these really young teenagers about why they were taking part in the protests. And all of a sudden, this kind of electric ripple went through the crowd. And everybody kind of was shouting that Jimmy Lai had arrived on the protest scene. And these students just like mid-interview just fled, you know, just to get close to where he was. And I was sort of on an overpass, I could see sort of the crowd surging around him. And just, you know, to see all these really young people who were excited about the future of Hong Kong, excited again about this promise that one day they would get a vote, surging to see this man who they saw as kind of the, you know, the emblematic symbols of this protest, of this whole protest movement was really something. You know, those protests continued. There were more in 2019 that actually became quite violent. And then in 2020, the national security law was put in place right when COVID was kind of really coming into full force. So the protests were really shut down, people were treated to their homes. And then Hong Kong completely changed. And that's really when Jimmy Lai's story changed as well.

[00:04:19] Speaker 1: So in terms of how China deals with its critics, how have they gone about treating Jimmy Lai? And what's his life in prison been like? Because I've heard in some quarters of the media, he's been described as the conscience of Hong Kong by some.

[00:04:31] Speaker 2: Really, the story of Jimmy Lai and how he's been treated is kind of the story of Hong Kong. So there's incredibly strict laws put in place. And almost overnight, the kind of energy behind that democracy movement is kind of sapped away from Hong Kong. So, you know, a lot of people are arrested, media outlets are shut down. A lot of people are really worried. They actually leave Hong Kong. And Jimmy Lai, crucially, is arrested two months later in August 2020. The media organization, his media organization, Apple Daily, is raided. And Jimmy Lai almost immediately goes into solitary confinement. He's treated really harshly by the Chinese authorities. And his health has really deteriorated, we should say. He's 78 years old. And apparently he's lost, according to his children, he's lost 10 kilograms in the past year alone. So there are real concerns for his health. And a lot of people, you know, again, talk about the health of Jimmy Lai and the health of Hong Kong and its civil society, the Hong Kong, future of Hong Kong, kind of as one.

[00:05:37] Speaker 1: Jimmy Lai is also a British citizen. So that's important to note here. Are China not worried that this could cause diplomatic problems? There was a recent visit as well from the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. And did he bring it up?

[00:05:51] Speaker 2: Apparently he did. You know, we've also heard that the White House, US diplomats have been pushing the case for Jimmy Lai to be released into exile. It is possible. You know, we have Donald Trump going to visit China in April. Some people have raised the possibility that maybe Jimmy Lai will be allowed to go into exile. I don't think he'd ever be released and allowed to kind of live in Hong Kong again. I think that ship has sailed. But there is a chance that Jimmy Lai might be allowed to leave and just go and live a very quiet life in exile. There is some precedent for this. So, for example, Liu Xiaobo, he was a famous Chinese dissident. He was put into prison in mainland China. He won the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison. The Chinese authorities did not release him until he basically was on his deathbed from cancer. He was released into hospital in 2017. He died just over two weeks later. But there is some precedent for Beijing kind of responding to international diplomatic pressure. I don't think they would do so directly after a request was made. They're trying to protect their idea that their system is not up for debate. But I think there is a possibility that maybe around this U.S. visit, maybe after Jimmy Lai serves a full year of this prison sentence, whether because of his ill health, they might let him go because they certainly do not want him to die in prison.

[00:07:18] Speaker 1: A lot of people also make the parallels between the fate of Jimmy Lai and Hong Kong's struggle for democracy. So when it comes to the future, and I guess somewhat the present as well, how does this unfold?

[00:07:32] Speaker 2: The message here from Xi Jinping right at the top of the communist authorities is no one is above the law, and I will go after the most powerful people if I need to, if they threaten me. Already in China, we've seen China's richest man, Jack Ma, be silenced, go into exile, and then quietly be rehabilitated, but never really quite returned to his platform. Just in the past couple of weeks, we've seen the head of the Chinese military be thrown out of his position, and he's now under investigation. This is a man who was Xi Jinping's childhood friend. So I think the message is from Xi Jinping, who runs China, that no one is above the law, and I will not hesitate to hand down any really strict sentence.

[00:08:18] Speaker 1: We know Taiwan is trying to preserve its own independence as well. So what sort of a message does it send to Taiwan, I guess?

[00:08:25] Speaker 2: Taiwan is a territory that Beijing believes is its own. Taiwan is self-ruled, but Beijing and the authorities in Beijing have always said that they want to reclaim Taiwan, that it belongs to them. So for a long time, we were watching, especially during those umbrella protests I mentioned, which were to a certain extent tolerated by the Chinese authorities. And the theory was that maybe Hong Kong was being allowed to develop its own political system, its own sort of creative civil society, in order to lure Taiwan back into the fold. That maybe if Hong Kong was made to look like an attractive place, people in Taiwan might think, okay, well, maybe it's not so bad to actually rejoin the Chinese umbrella and become part of mainland China again. I think now, especially with the sentencing of Jimmy Lai, and the imposition of this national security law in Hong Kong, that really has taken a lot of what was unique about Hong Kong away. It's really part of within the Chinese fold now. You know, we've sort of seen a move away from that possible strategy, if it ever existed, that, you know, we're seeing a lot more kind of threats to Taiwan now that, look, you to rejoin us or else look what we're capable of. I think the days of trying to pull Taiwan in through sweetness and light are probably gone.

[00:09:48] Speaker 1: Celia, thank you so much for your time and expertise. Celia Hatton, our fellow Global News Podcast presenter and longtime China correspondent. Well, if you enjoyed stories like this, then do check out our Global News Podcast. You can download that wherever you get your podcasts from. And do like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and do drop us a comment below if there are any stories you'd like us to cover in more detail. For now, thanks so much for your time and company.