After more than 1,400 days in prison, Hong Kong’s most famous entrepreneur took the stand in late November to defend himself against charges of undermining national security. Jimmy Lai, who started as a sweater manufacturer and expanded to publishing, said his goal was not to undermine Hong Kong, but simply to inform. As he explained in court, “The more information you have, the more you are in the know, the more you are free.”
It’s peculiar, after four decades of China’s unparalleled economic success, that Beijing now appears singularly threatened by a man who is, above all, a businessman. Anyone who travels to China knows the country is all about business, nowhere more so than in the autonomous city of Hong Kong, a former British colony known for its go-go free-market spirit. Yet for four years, the man many Hong Kongers proudly claim as a hero has been sitting in solitary confinement in the maximum-security Stanley Prison.
