Jimmy Lai’s path from media mogul to prison term
Jimmy Lai, once a prominent figure in Hong Kong’s media and business scene, has ended up with a long prison sentence after Hong Kong authorities convicted him in a national security case and sentenced him to 20 years on Monday. The prosecution’s findings centered on allegations that Lai conspired to commit sedition and colluded with foreign forces, charges that have also framed his case for many supporters as a struggle over political freedoms.
The government has said Lai’s case is not about press freedom, according to the Associated Press reporting. Observers, however, have said the trial has come to symbolize a broader crackdown that began in 2020 on press and other freedoms, a shift that has changed Hong Kong since it returned to Chinese control in 1997.
From Guangzhou to Hong Kong, then into garments
Lai was born in 1947 in Guangzhou, in southern China, two years before the communists came to power. At 12, he stowed away on a fishing boat to Hong Kong, about 135 kilometers (84 miles) from Guangzhou, hoping to find a better life in the British colony.
Lai later worked as a child laborer in a glove factory, an early step that placed him in Hong Kong’s garment industry. In 1981, he founded Giordano, an affordable casual clothing chain that grew into an international brand, with 1,600 retail outlets in 30 countries, according to the company’s website.
Publishing gives him a platform
The AP report says Lai sold his interest in Giordano in the mid-1990s when the company came under pressure from Beijing. That pressure came after he called hard-line Premier Li Peng “the son of a turtle egg” following Li Peng’s justification of the government’s deadly 1989 crackdown on protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
After the Tiananmen crackdown, Lai printed T-shirts in support of the pro-democracy protests and made his first foray into publishing in 1990 with the founding of Next Magazine. Five years later, he started Apple Daily, a tabloid-style publication whose readership was drawn partly to sensational reporting and investigative scoops, while the paper openly criticized the Chinese and Hong Kong governments.
By the time of Lai’s later prosecution, the Associated Press said his Apple Daily writings had become part of the evidence used at trial, following the newspaper’s shuttering.
Street protests, then arrest after national security law
Lai became more publicly associated with protest-era politics in Hong Kong. In 2014, he took part in the pro-democracy demonstrations known as the Umbrella Movement, which lasted for months and saw demonstrators use umbrellas to shield themselves from police pepper spray. The AP report said Apple Daily ran articles sympathetic to the movement.
A new wave of protests arrived in 2019, when the government faced upheaval that the reporting said led to the crackdown on the city’s freedoms. Lai also urged U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to speak out on Hong Kong’s situation in meetings that later became part of the case during his trial.
The following year, China’s central government imposed a national security law on Hong Kong. Lai was arrested more than a month later, and the AP report said he has been in custody since December 2020.
Testimony and religious drawings from jail
In court, Lai argued that his writings were not seditious and were done without hostility. The AP report said he testified in November 2024, telling the court, “For truth prevails in God’s kingdom, and that’s good enough for me,” and arguing that his Apple Daily writings were done without hostility or seditious intent.
The reporting also described how his faith shows up in prison. A Roman Catholic, Lai made drawings in custody of the crucifixion of Jesus, according to his friend Robert Sirico, a priest who received one of the pictures. The AP said Lai, who was sometimes called “Fatty Lai” by some friends and even a rival newspaper, appears to have become thinner behind bars.
A statement before the sentence was handed down
Before the sentence, the AP report quoted Lai in July 2020 as saying: “Hong Kong is dead.” It also said he told The Associated Press, “If I have to go to prison, I don’t mind. I don’t care,” adding, “It won’t be something I can worry about, I’ll just relax and do what I have to do.”
Taken together, Lai’s story in the reporting traces a path from business and publishing to prolonged detention and courtroom arguments over what his journalism and political actions amounted to under Hong Kong’s national security framework.