The Jimmy Lai verdict – the NatSec trial started in December 2023 – is expected in October…
Lai has pleaded not guilty to two conspiracy charges of collusion with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed national security law, and a third of conspiring to publish “seditious” materials under a colonial-era law. He could be jailed for life if convicted.
Last week, the start date of a national security trial against members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China – the now-disbanded group that was once behind the city’s Tiananmen crackdown vigil – was also delayed to November, after judges considered their schedules due to Lai’s case.
Albert Ho, Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung were charged alongside the alliance itself with inciting subversion of state power under the Beijing-imposed national security law. They could be jailed for life if convicted.
The trial was originally set to begin on May 6.
National Review review of Mark Clifford’s The Troublemaker…
Shortly after the October 2023 Synod in Rome, ten Catholic bishops from around the world released a public statement calling for the immediate and unconditional release from prison of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong entrepreneur, media executive, and human rights activist. Lai was awaiting a show trial (which continues today) on charges of having violated a draconian “national security” law that was adopted in 2020 and aimed at crushing what was left of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. At the time of the bishops’ appeal, Lai had been imprisoned in solitary confinement for almost 1,000 days, and the prelates were polite but firm: “There is no place for such cruelty and oppression in a territory that claims to uphold the rule of law and respect the right to freedom of expression.”
The over-the-top response from the Hong Kong authorities and their local media mouthpieces to this plea for decency was grossly out of proportion to the bishops’ request, and all the more telling for that.
The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) reacted with a tirade that would have done Dr. Goebbels proud, back in the day: “The HKSAR Government firmly rejects and strongly disapproves of the fact-twisting remarks made by foreign Catholic leaders to inappropriately interfere in the HKSAR’s internal affairs and the HKSAR courts’ independent exercise of judicial power. Any person, regardless of his or her identity, who attempts to interfere with the judicial proceedings in the HKSAR in order to procure a defendant’s evasion of the criminal justice process is blatantly undermining the rule of law of the HKSAR.”
HKSAR’s oxymoronic “secretary for justice,” Paul Lam Ting-kwok, piled on, claiming that the bishops’ statement was “absolutely unacceptable in principle,” and warned that anyone making a statement such as the bishops’ was perverting the course of justice and risked being charged with criminal contempt of court
…The Hong King authorities have done everything possible to humiliate, and then break, this now 77-year-old man, who could have fled Hong Kong and lived comfortably anywhere in the world: Jimmy is brought to his trial in chains, with an escort of screaming police cars — a scenario not quite as grotesquely cruel as the hurdles on which the English martyrs were dragged to Tyburn Hill in the days of Henry VIII, but deliberately dehumanizing in the same way. The paradox, however, is that this deliberate degradation has made Jimmy Lai stronger: “He is living in complete freedom,” {His wife] Teresa told Clifford, who complements that affirmation with his own: Jimmy “has a clear goal: maintain his innocence and continue to resist his captors with dignity and honor. He knows what he is doing. Behind bars since the last day of 2020, now with his prison window boarded up, he has been purified by the experience, approaching it as a spiritual quest and a test of his faith.”
In persecuting Jimmy Lai, China is telling the world important things the world needs to know about what Clifford aptly limns as “the cruelty and barbarity of the Chinese communist system.” In telling Jimmy Lai’s story with both honesty and admiration, Mark Clifford has not only done his friend a great service; he has offered a warning about the character of a regime to which far too many are eager to kowtow.
From the Manchester China Institute, a short discussion by Jeffrey Wassesrstrom on the links between Hunger Games, the Milk Tea Alliance and Hong Kong’s resistance movement.
Opinion piece in the Hill by former China YouTuber Matthew Tye, asking whether the platform is promoting pro-Beijing content…
I believe YouTube is actively promoting pro-Chinese government, anti-American content while suppressing voices critical of China’s communist regime. Why? Because it is happening to me.
…Our audience grew rapidly [after we left China]. During our coverage of China’s role in creating the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the Chinese government attempting to control the narrative by having videos removed, attacking companies that sponsored us and actively promoting false stories about the pandemic. The Chinese government, apparently by mistake, even contacted us offering $2,000 if we would upload a pre-made video blaming the pandemic on white-tailed deer in the U.S. Several western YouTubers did in fact upload this same video, perhaps after receiving similar incentives.
China’s online strategy shifted late last year, at a time when YouTube’s algorithms changed as well. Right after the U.S. election — despite our not covering U.S. politics or the election — viewership across all three of our channels fell off a cliff.
We have since studied this overnight collapse in viewership. In a sample of six videos prior to November 2024, my channel was averaging 448,000 views per video. My first six videos after the U.S. election averaged just 125,000 views — 72 percent less. In the same time frame, Winston’s channel plunged from an average 534,000 views per video to just 178,000, a drop of 67 percent. Our collaborative weekly show, The China Show, saw a drop of about 25 percent during this same period.
One thing he and his collaborator found is that their videos received far more views when they gave them apparently anti-US/pro-China titles.