Jimmy Lai’s Sentence Bares Threat to Free China

Today’s call by the president of Free China, Lai Ching-te, for the release of activist Jimmy Lai suggests that Taiwan’s elected leader grasps the stakes in the prosecution of the 78-year-old press mogul. Mr. Lai’s punishment, derided by critics as a “death sentence,” belies Beijing’s promises to uphold civil liberties at Hong Kong. It’s a harbinger, too, of what awaits Free China in the event of “reunification” with the communist regime on the mainland. Yet Taiwan’s president is contending with an opposition party, the Kuomintang or Nationalists, that appears oblivious to this danger. The KMT’s chairwoman, Cheng Li-wun, is even expected in March to meet at Beijing with the head of the Communist Chinese regime, Xi Jinping. The Nationalists, too, are blocking the president’s attempt to boost Free China’s defense budget to meet the threat posed by an increasingly aggressive mainland.The mandarins’ menacing posture — underscored by talk of capturing Taiwan by 2027, in time for the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party — is the lens through which to view President Lai’s effort to preserve Taiwan’s self-ruling government. That likely animates his condemnation of the sentence imposed on Jimmy Lai. “Taiwan,” the president avers, “stands with Mr Jimmy Lai and all the people who safeguard freedom.”Free China’s president, Lai Ching-te, urged Beijing “to immediately release Mr Jimmy Lai” and to “stop pursuing political persecution under the false pretext of enforcing the law.” The newspaper baron ran afoul of the communist regime for using his pro-democracy Apple Daily as a vehicle to criticize Beijing. The communist regime in 2020 imposed over Hong Kong, which had enjoyed substantial freedoms under British rule, a repressive National Security Law. “Incredibly heartbreaking,” is how Jimmy Lai’s son, Sebastien, described to the BBC the sentence, which he said “signifies the total destruction of the Hong Kong legal system and the end of justice.” President Lai appears to share this appraisal. The sentence, he warns, “proves that Beijing’s so-called ‘one country, two systems’ scheme exists in name only.” Hong Kong’s “judiciary has been degraded to a tool for depriving personal freedom,” he adds. Yet Mr. Xi’s regime offers the same inducement, “one country, two systems” to preserve, in the event of reunification, Taiwan’s liberties. These freedoms are ordained in the constitution of the Republic of China forged by the pioneer of Chinese Democracy, Sun Yat-sen, a New York Sun correspondent. Sun backed “government by the people, of the people and for the people,” adding “I believe in this since I believe in the Chinese people.”It’s hard to see how Taiwan’s opposition party can entertain the idea that the island democracy’s liberties could be maintained in the event of a rapprochement with Beijing. A top Communist Chinese official today reiterated the regime’s support for what it calls “patriotic pro-reunification forces” on Taiwan and threatened to “strike against” what Beijing derides as “separatist forces” who back what it considers the fictitious idea of “Taiwan independence.”“No one should be under any illusion that the rule of law in Hong Kong still exists,” says Jimmy Lai’s daughter Claire. It’s testament to Lai Ching-te’s political acuity to stress the threat that this poses for Free China. The Sun stands with the millions around the world who understand Jimmy Lai’s stature in the movement for Chinese Democracy. It’s time for America to redouble its efforts to help him be freed so he can spend his remaining years with his heroic family.

Jimmy Lai’s Sentence Bares Threat to Free China

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