Following are the remarks of Sebastien Lai to the Cato Institute Thursday at Washington on the occasion of its award to his father, Jimmy Lai, of the Milton Friedman Prize.

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When Milton Friedman was invited to China he asked my father to go with him. As dad tells it, one day they were seated at a hotel bar and saw this lady soliciting clients. 

You see, China was very poor at the time. So ever an economist, Milton Friedman gave my father a one-hour lecture about the economics of the oldest profession in the world.

Even in this planned economy there were sprouts of free market forces everywhere you looked. It was a common belief that as China became more liberal economically it would also become more democratic. Hong Kong was a litmus test in how China viewed democratic and free market values. 

My father knew that information is choice and choice is freedom. This led him to start Apple Daily and Next magazine after the Tiananmen Square massacre. 

For more than 26 years, they told truth to power and campaigned for democracy. This bought him the ire of the powerful across China. 

Dad championed freedoms that the Chinese Communist Party calls western ideals but we know are self-evident. For defending these truths, refusing to bend the knee, and campaigning for representation in his home city, my father  now sits in a prison cell at an age when most would have retired. 

Jimmy Lai went to Hong Kong as a child thirsting for freedom. He is now sitting in prison at the age of 75 trying to protect that freedom.

Allow me to end these remarks with a story of mine. A few weeks ago as I was heading out of the BBC building in London in the pouring rain. To reach my Uber I passed Orwell’s quote etched onto one of it’s walls:

“If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Drenched and realizing that I was soaking the gentleman’s car, I turned to the driver and said “Isn’t the weather horrible today.” He replied, “You know, most times I’m by myself in the car, but the rain brings passengers and friends to ride with me.” 

He then went on to say: “I’m from Eritrea, and when I was a kid we would go to church and prayed for rain. We felt lucky on days it rained.”

It dawned on me that freedom of speech is like rain: most people in free societies take it for granted, but when it’s gone, nothing vital can flourish. Free speech and its champions should not be taken for granted.

For that I would like to thank the Cato Institute for giving this prize to my father. I pray that he may be able to thank you personally himself soon.