Family members and friends of Jimmy Lai, a businessman and a pro-democracy newspaper owner in Hong Kong, are holding out hope that he can still be released after his guilty verdict on national security and sedition charges, if President Trump and other world leaders put pressure on Xi Jinping to free him.
On Monday, both Trump and British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper called for Lai’s release.
“I feel so badly. I spoke to President Xi about it, and I asked to consider his release,” Trump said. “He’s not well. He’s an older man, and he’s not well. So, I did put that request out – we’ll see what happens.”
Cooper noted that Lai is a British citizen and said she had summoned the Chinese ambassador after hearing the verdict.
“But for the sake of Jimmy Lai, for his family, but also for the people of Hong Kong, for the joint Declaration we signed, and for the rule of law, we will not relent on this,” Cooper said. “Joined by nations across the world, we call again for the immediate release of Jimmy Lai.”
Trump’s remarks came just hours after Lai, 78, was found guilty on three charges – one sedition charge and two charges of violating the National Security Law, a heavy-handed 2020 law ushering in a human rights crackdown after pro-democracy protests dominated Hong Kong news for months in 2019.
Lai’s daughter, Claire Lai, told reporters that his fate now lies in the hands of world leaders who have the opportunity to rise up and advocate on behalf of her father.
“We expected the verdict,” Claire Lai told CBS News on Monday. “As much as you can expect that, you can only be so ready for it. So, I am grieving.”
Father Robert Sirico, a longtime friend of Jimmy Lai’s and a Catholic priest and religious freedom advocate, argues that the Lai case exposes a deeper scandal – that Western democracies, global institutions, and even the Vatican have chosen silence over principle. In this way, they are trying to protect their access to China’s markets while allowing a man of conscience to “rot in a cell,” he said.
Sirico applauded Trump’s response and his efforts to free Lai.
“I think Jimmy has made his point quite eloquently and now begins the conversation as to what we can do about this,” Sirico told RealClearPolitics. “I think the important thing is just to get this man out of there.”
Sirico added that Xi likely views Lai’s verdict as a symbolic message aimed at suppressing other pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and China and warned that freeing him would likely take concessions on the part of the U.S., including a possible prisoner exchange.
“Xi, in some ways is like Trump – he’s very transactional,” Sirico said. “I don’t think Trump would get into a conversation with Xi not realizing that he’s going to have to give something for [Lai’s freedom].”
Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, a widely read pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong that was often sharply critical of the Chinese government’s increasing controls over the city, has spent more than four years in prison awaiting Monday’s guilty verdict. The paper became the target of Hong Kong authorities controlled by Beijing after it supported the mass protests from 2019 to 2020 against restrictions on personal freedoms. Lai was arrested in 2020, and the paper closed in 2021 after police raided the newsroom, arresting editors and reporters and freezing the publication’s assets.
For more than two decades, Hong Kong operated under the “one country, two systems” principle enshrined in a document called the Basic Law, which serves as the city’s mini-constitution and protects rights such as freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, which do not exist in mainland China.
It was created through an agreement between Britain and China and came into effect on July 1, 1997, the day Hong Kong returned to Chinese control. These protections for Hong Kong were supposed to be valid for 50 years after the handover, but under President Xi Jinping’s rule, China has tightened control over the city and stated that his ultimate goal is to reunify Hong Kong and Taiwan with mainland China.
Sirico says the Vatican, under the late Pope Francis’s leadership, refused to confront Xi’s human rights abuses, but there’s a chance for a new approach under Pope Leo XIV.
“Francis saw communists being persecuted in Argentina in his day,” Sirico explained. “I think it was hard for him to wrap his head around the idea that communists can be persecutors, and that’s what I see in China in this situation and in Nicaragua.”
Leo met with Lai’s wife and daughter in mid-October, which human rights advocates viewed as a sign of a new approach to China and support for Lai, who converted to Catholicism in 1997 and has spoken publicly about his faith on numerous occasions.
Earlier this year, Trump joined advocates in condemning Lai’s imprisonment, vowing to do “everything [he] can” to save the activist.
“[Lai’s] name has already entered the circle of things that we’re talking about,” Trump said in August.
Claire Lai has said that she last spoke to her father in June of this year and warned that his health has significantly deteriorated under harsh prison conditions that have included solitary confinement. She recalled that his nails had changed colors and were falling off, and his teeth were rotting, and openly worried that his diabetes and heart palpitations had worsened.
She and her legal team have voiced concerns that appeals could take more than eight years and fear that he may not live long enough to endure captivity.
“My father does not have eight years,” she told CBS News. “If we wait to the end of the appeals process, there will not be a man at the end of that process.
