On Saturday last week, Jimmy Lai (黎智英), a successful businessman, and brave campaigner for freedom and democracy, was led into court in Hong Kong in handcuffs and chains, accused of breaking the National Security Law imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Chinese authorities’ goal in charging Lai was to reinforce the new limits to the rule of law, dissent and autonomy in the territory.
The judge was handpicked by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥), whose primary responsibility is to execute the CCP’s malevolent instructions regarding the territory. Supporters of the 72-year-old Lai, including Cardinal Joseph Zen (陳日君), were in the courtroom to witness him being denied bail until a trial scheduled for April.
The Chinese government hates Lai, because he embodies a passionate belief in freedom, and we must hope that any time Lai spends in prison will be in Hong Kong rather than the mainland. His handcuffs and chains are a tragic symbol of what has happened this year to Hong Kong’s once-free society.
The CCP has of course victimized everyone all this year. The party initially covered up the COVID-19 outbreak in China and silenced brave doctors when they tried to warn the world about what we would soon face.
Some national leaders have added to the gloom. US President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the result of an election that he lost by 7 million votes has undermined the US’ democratic system. His appalling behavior — abetted by Republican leaders and the party’s media allies — demeans him and the party, and weakens the case for liberal democracy everywhere.
Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to connive in the security services’ murders of his opponents and to undermine democratic states wherever he can, while other authoritarian leaders, from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, have consolidated illiberal regimes by changing their countries’ constitutions and electoral systems.
However, it is Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) who has represented the most serious threat to liberal democratic values this year. Exploiting the world’s preoccupation with the pandemic, Chinese forces have killed Indian soldiers in the Himalayas, sunk and threatened other countries’ fishing vessels in international waters and menaced Taiwan.
Xi’s regime has also continued to pursue genocidal policies toward Uighurs in Xinjiang, in addition to targeting Hong Kong’s freedoms.
When Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, China’s leaders promised in an international treaty lodged at the UN that the territory would continue to enjoy its way of life and high level of autonomy for 50 years. That promise, like so many of the CCP’s undertakings, has been junked.
China was clearly horrified that elections and demonstrations increasingly showed that the majority of people in Hong Kong — like the Taiwanese — refused to accept that to love China, they had to love the CCP.
At least two-thirds of Hong Kong citizens were themselves refugees or relatives of refugees from the horrors of China’s communist history.
These people wanted to retain the system that had helped them prosper and made Hong Kong an international economic hub. The territory’s governance, like that of other free societies, was based on the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers, freedom of expression and a market economy.
These aspects of an open society terrify Xi’s regime. The CCP’s control depends on party bosses at the center maintaining an iron grip on everything.
Universities and schools must be “engineers of the soul,” to use former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s phrase. Courts should do what the CCP tells them. The free flow of information is too dangerous and any notion of democratic accountability must be stifled.
Countries from Australia to Canada that criticize some of the CCP’s behavior are singled out for commercial bullying, or worse. China has taken two Canadian citizens hostage because of Ottawa’s 2018 decision to detain Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟); the men are about to spend a third Christmas in solitary confinement.
This year, it was Hong Kong’s turn. The comprehensive stifling of the territory’s freedom has proceeded remorselessly, encompassing schools and universities, the legislature, courts, civil service and the media. All dissent is to be crushed, with democracy campaigners thrown into prison.
Lai is the latest and most prominent victim of the CCP’s idea of law, which the US academic and China specialist Perry Link once described as like “an anaconda in the chandelier.”
Lai was born in China, but escaped to Hong Kong as a 12-year-old stowaway without a penny to his name. He worked in a garment factory, earned enough to start his own business and founded the international retail fashion chain Giordano.
Lai never forgot that it was freedom and the rule of law that allowed him and others to prosper, and he denounced communism’s contempt for both.
After the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, he directly criticized then-Chinese premier Li Peng (李鵬). As a result, his home and businesses were attacked and bombed by “united front” communist activists and their cohorts in Hong Kong’s criminal triads.
Forced to close his garment business, Lai established a hugely popular magazine and newspaper group. He strongly supported democracy and never toned down his criticisms of Chinese communism.
A devout Catholic, Lai regarded Hong Kong as his home, and was determined to stay and fight for the place he loved.
For the apparent crimes of principle and courage, and his refusal to surrender his beliefs, Lai has been targeted by a vengeful CCP with the collaboration of a few Hong Kong lickspittles, whose reputations will forever be tarred by shame and infamy.
Imprisonment often ennobles fighters for democracy and bolsters support for their cause: think of Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela or Vaclav Havel. Now think of Jimmy Lai, my man of the year.
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external affairs, is chancellor of the University of Oxford.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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