Before the pandemic, Hong Kong was a boiling cauldron and there was no shortage of cameras to portray the young revolt against the tutelage of the Communist Party of China (CCP). Little remains of that boil. This Monday, in the former British colony, the trial against Jimmy Lai, one of his alleged instigators, began normally. The media mogul faces charges of “sedition” and “collusion with foreign powers.” The cameras are still there, the revolt is not.
Lai, through his publications and financing, contributed to bringing tens of thousands of young people with democratic concerns to the streets. Unfortunately, during those months of 2019, episodes of vandalism and a handful of deaths and injuries were also recorded on both sides.
At the opening of the trial – postponed for a year – instead of a demonstration, a thousand police officers were waiting for Jimmy Lai, as well as consular representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and five other countries, in addition to the EU. Along with them, a few dozen people were queuing early in the morning for the nearly four hundred passes (in person and by videoconference) provided by the Hong Kong government to attend the first viewing.
This takes place in the West Kowloon court and not in the corresponding high court, precisely to allow more public attendance. Lai has moved there from the high-security Stanley prison, where he is serving a rigorous five-year sentence for fraudulent use of a license, for having used the building he had rented as a newsroom as a consultancy.
This time, the unique billionaire, 76 years old, could be sentenced to life imprisonment, if found guilty, at the end of the eighty days scheduled for trial.
From London, Foreign Minister David Cameron has called for the release of the prisoner, who also has a British passport. Cameron, who maintained an excellent relationship with Beijing during his years as prime minister, welcomed Lai’s children last week. They were in the room this Monday, accompanied by her mother, sitting next to an important member of the Catholic clergy of Hong Kong.
It should be noted that Lai was baptized a little over twenty years ago. His godfather was his friend William McGurn, a speechwriter for US President George W. Bush. Lai, who boasted of being a self-made man, dealt with many other personalities in the neoconservative sphere, such as former Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz or former National Security Advisor John Bolton.
According to witnesses, Lai had in his office two busts of the ultraliberal economists whom Augusto Pinochet had embraced in Chile, namely Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. In fact, he personally taught the latter the hidden side of China. His newspaper, Apple – closed in 2021 – included a section criticizing brothels and prostitutes.
Mark Simon, Lai’s right-hand man at Next Digital, his media group that included the weekly Next and the aforementioned newspaper, with a print edition in Chinese – for Hong Kong and Taiwan – and a digital edition in English, was also American. Simon responded to reports from the leading Hong Kong newspaper, South China Morning Post, that described him as a CIA agent, like his father, alleging that his work of “four years in naval intelligence” had ended. decades ago.
However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry, through its spokesperson, expands the previous accusation, including the millions of dollars dispensed by two entities registered in Hong Kong by the National Endowment for Democracy, a Washington organization that it describes as “second INC”.
Lai, who moved from Canton to Hong Kong at the age of twelve, supposedly built a textile empire from scratch, which he later sold for $320 million, to concentrate on the media. His relationship with the Communist Party dates back to at least 1989, when he would have already financed the mobilizations in Tiananmen Square.
A quarter of a century later, in 2014, with Hong Kong once again integrated into China – since 1997 – it supported Occupy Central, rallies against Beijing’s tutelage, seen as democratizing from abroad and secessionist from China.
Although all or nothing was played in 2019, when tension rose to the maximum in Hong Kong, with great media pressure and hints of violence. However, the PRC resisted the temptation to crush the protest, if it ever had one. There was no second Tiananmen.
The outbreak of covid and the confinement measures, later practically universalized, were the epitaph of the protests. In parallel, China did not mobilize the tanks, but the legal arsenal. Like Beijing, which does not recognize dual nationality, Hong Kong also stopped treating its citizens differently with a second passport, generally British, in the case of Jimmy Lai.
The latter is a person so politically renowned in Hong Kong that, in fact, he made the rest of the enclave’s magnates uncomfortable, much more willing to do good business with the new authorities, after the expulsion of the British, as well as with the CCP.
Lai, who was born in Canton, in mainland China, into a family expropriated by Mao, emigrated at the age of twelve to the British colony, where Cantonese is also spoken and where he built a fortune from scratch, with his own brand of textile. At that time, he would have shown little or no interest in replacing colonial command and order with a democratic system.
The Hong Kong prosecutor’s office, with the subtlety of martial arts, has decided to prosecute Lai, not with the National Security Law approved ex professo in Beijing in 2020, but with the anti-sedition legislation of the British colonial era, praised by the accused. Lai’s legal team, made up of five lawyers, argues that, under colonial law, charges should have been filed within six months, but that they were filed four days late.
Lai faces a possible life sentence, for violation of the National Security Law, in case the magistrates consider proven the accusations of “conspiracy with foreign powers to incite social hatred” and to “promote international sanctions against China and the representatives governments in Hong Kong.
On the other hand, the economic integration of Hong Kong and Macao in their human, cultural and geographical space continues in leaps and bounds. The infrastructure works to create ties between Hong Kong and Shenzhen – in the eighties, a fishing village, today larger than Hong Kong, and at the same time China’s Silicon Valley – have involved enormous investments.
Jimmy Lai is not going to have it easy. In the previous months, several of his collaborators have been tried in related cases and have testified against him. His boss, they said, was seeking sanctions against Hong Kong and China to promote regime change.
In July 2019, days after a sympathetic mob invaded and ransacked the Hong Kong House of Representatives, Lai was received at the White House by Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State – and former CIA Director – Mike. Six months later, another aggressive mob searched the hallways for Pence in the storming of the Capitol.
This Monday, coinciding with the start of Lai’s trial, the president of China, Xi Jinping, in the company of Prime Minister Li Qiang, received the leader of Hong Kong – and former security agent – John Lee and congratulated him “for bringing Hong Kong from chaos to order” and for conducting the district council elections two weekends ago. But with a 27% stake he would do well not to get complacent.
The Hang Seng Index of the Hong Kong stock market, on the other hand, has lost 16% this year (fourth consecutive decline). Despite everything, Xi has guaranteed the validity of capitalism in Hong Kong, under the principle of “one country, two systems.” A 50-year commitment that has already crossed the equator, until full integration in 2047.
“This trial undermines confidence in the rule of law in Hong Kong,” said an EU spokesperson, hinting at the consequent repercussions for such an important financial center. In fact, last year, Singapore surpassed Hong Kong in the ranking of financial centers. And just a week ago, the capitalization of the Indian stock market for the first time surpassed that of Hong Kong, which was already behind that of Shanghai and even that of Shenzhen, on the other side of the bay.
A part of Hong Kong’s malaise is still there, related to that loss of relative weight. For the economic rise of China and the transformation and improvement of the quality of life in its cities. To this we must add the judicial persecution of the 2019 protest and the measures against the pandemic, which favored a difficult-to-quantify number of emigrations and exiles, both to Taiwan and Singapore and to English-speaking countries.
Two Wednesdays ago, the US agency Moody’s downgraded Hong Kong’s credit outlook from stable to negative. Its economy, this year, will grow 3.2%, again less than that of the rest of China. However, expectations are not exactly more promising in the West, pending two wars.
Likewise, the relative success with which China dealt with the pandemic, compared to the West, has not won points for those who four years ago were provocatively waving British or American flags in Hong Kong. Something that in India, without going any further, would take them directly to the police station.
Finally, Beijing’s promise to maintain the “one country, two systems” policy, as Xi Jinping assures, has not disappeared, but in the opinion of some it has been devalued. An important verdict on this matter will be given by the Chinese in Taiwan next month, when they go to the polls.
