Former Hong Kong media magnate Jimmy Lai (黎智英), who on Monday was sentenced to 20 years in jail for his role in the 2019 Hong Kong democracy movement and “colluding with foreign forces,” once called on members of the US government for support in his struggle against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Speaking to a forum at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in July 2019, Lai, speaking about the US having the moral authority over the CCP, said: “It’s like they are going to battle without any weapon, and you have the nuclear weapon. You can finish them in a minute.”
It is the last part of that statement, taken out of context to suggest he had asked the US to bomb China, that the Chinese state media propaganda machine has leaned on to promote a narrative of Lai’s treason, and evidence of his inhumanity and of his extreme, debilitating hatred of the CCP. For these reasons, the argument goes, the 20-year sentence for a 78-year-old was justified. The narrative was used to push back against reporting from outside China that the accusations against Lai, the trial process and the sentence itself amounted to political persecution.
It is inconceivable that Lai could have meant the statement literally: He used the term “nuclear weapon” as a metaphor for the overwhelming moral legitimacy that he believed the US had, but that the CCP lacked. He was referring to a conversation that he had just had with then-US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and then US vice president Mike Pence, appealing for support from the US for the democracy protests.
He also referred to then-US president John F. Kennedy’s June 26, 1963, Ich bin ein Berliner speech in West Berlin — in which Kennedy offered encouragement to West Germans in the face of Soviet intimidation and threat — saying that Hong Kongers were in dire need of similar support. Lai also evoked the idea of a cold war as a war of “competing values.”
Asked by the moderator, foundation senior vice president for research Jonathan Schanzer, to clarify what more the US could do in addition to providing moral encouragement, Lai said it could send US senators to Hong Kong to voice their support, to be “physically present” to add weight to the encouragement.
That is what the Beijing propaganda machinery disingenuously interpreted as a call for the use of nuclear weapons against China.
A transcript and video of Lai’s remarks are available on the federation’s Web site. The attempt to vilify Lai as a cold, rabid traitor is so easily refutable, and yet the propaganda machine is betting on the fact that people who want to believe the lie will take it at its word.
Beijing’s attempt to defend the trial as anything but the death of freedom of speech and the smothering of democratic processes in Hong Kong is negated by its very methodology. That the state propaganda machine had to resort to such underhanded methods provides ample justification for the democracy drive in Hong Kong. That politics was given primacy over rule of law has delivered the desired effect: a chilling effect over the media and accountability in Hong Kong.
If the state is prepared to stamp on the face of a wealthy, high-profile public figure, a citizen of another country no less, and to deliver what is essentially a life sentence to a septuagenarian who was simply practicing his right to free speech — which should be guaranteed by international law — then it would be prepared to do this to anyone even with legislation enacted after the alleged “crimes.”
The desired effect was not the ultimate goal. It is just the means for maintaining control over the populace without resorting to state violence, as the world witnessed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. The 20-year sentence is less a reflection of the seriousness of the “crimes” than it is a measure of the risk the CCP perceives to its fragile regime.
The ultimate goal was to manufacture the moral legitimacy of a regime that has proven itself capable of visiting violence on its own people, and continues to threaten violence against citizens of another country that it pretends to consider part of its “family.”
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