Free Jimmy Lai!

OPINION:

Last week, a Hong Kong court imposed a 20-year prison sentence on Jimmy Lai, China’s most prominent advocate for freedom of speech and the press.

The Wall Street Journal was hardly alone in observing that, because he is 78 and in failing health, the sentence is tantamount to a death penalty.

Nevertheless, an unidentified “spokesman for the Office of the Commissioner of the Chinese Foreign Ministry” quickly fired off a letter to The Journal’s editorial board.

“The Wall Street Journal owes it to the public to rise above the use of clickbait headlines and disinformation,” he scolded. “For your information, Hong Kong formally abolished the death penalty back in 1993.”

Frankly, I would have expected Chinese Communist Party propagandists to come up with something cleverer.

In 2019, Mr. Lai visited Washington, where he met with senior members of the Trump administration. He also paid a visit to the think tank where I hang my hat. At one point, I stated the obvious: If he returned to Hong Kong, he would face serious peril. He replied that defending freedom has always required risk and sacrifice.

How did Mr. Lai become a profile in courage? Born in mainland China in 1947, he fled to Hong Kong as a stowaway at age 12. He worked hard and well and, over the years, made a fortune in the garment industry. In the 1990s, he founded the popular Apple Daily newspaper and what became the Next Digital media group. He also became a devout Catholic.

The CCP’s mistreatment of Mr. Lai should outrage the leaders of all free nations, but none more than British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. For one, Mr. Lai has held British citizenship since 1994.

For another, Hong Kong was a British colony for more than a century and a half, and, despite the sophomoric virtue-signaling on college campuses over imperialism and colonialism, as long as the Union Jack flew over Hong Kong, its people enjoyed basic human rights and freedoms.

In 1984, Her Majesty’s government agreed to hand over Hong Kong to China’s rulers. Under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, those rulers pledged that the people of Hong Kong would be permitted to preserve their political, legal, economic and cultural autonomy until 2047.

In June 2020, however, Beijing imposed the disingenuously named National Security Law, criminalizing dissent, criticism and whatever else rubbed the CCP the wrong way.

In August 2020, more than 100 police officers raided Apple Daily’s offices and handcuffed and arrested Mr. Lai. Less than a year later, the newspaper was permanently shut down. Its last edition, published on June 24, 2021, sold 1 million copies, 10 times its usual daily circulation.

Mr. Lai has been held mostly in solitary confinement since. In December, he was convicted on two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces. The prosecution called him the “mastermind” of a plot to endanger China’s national security.

He also was convicted of conspiracy to publish “seditious materials,” articles designed to “incite public hatred or contempt” against the CCP and the government it runs.

How has Mr. Starmer responded to all this? After a visit to China last month, he bragged that he established “real outcomes” and a “pragmatic” relationship with Beijing, including a reduction in import tariffs on Scotch whisky from 10% to 5%. Wow!

He said he had a “respectful” discussion with Xi Jinping, China’s supreme ruler, and that he “called for” Mr. Lai’s release. To no effect, we now know.

Beijing’s plans to establish a supersized embassy in London — with, we may assume, a high-tech spy shop — are proceeding.

Mr. Starmer remains committed to giving Mauritius sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, where a strategic Anglo-American military base is located. Expect Chinese vessels to fish in those waters, and not just for seafood.

Most strikingly, Mr. Starmer has said Britain does not need to choose between Washington and Beijing. I suspect President Trump was not pleased to hear that Britain, a NATO member, now counts itself among the “nonaligned” nations.

By putting Mr. Lai behind bars for the rest of his life, Mr. Xi is sending a message not just to the people of Hong Kong but also to the Taiwanese and to the Chinese diaspora in Europe and America, where the CCP has been exercising “transnational repression.”

By coincidence, the sentencing of Mr. Lai nearly coincides with the 40th anniversary of Moscow’s release of Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, who had been held in the Gulag for nine years.

President Reagan pushed hard for Mr. Sharansky’s release, and historians credit him for achieving that goal. Perhaps Mr. Trump can now score a similar victory.

He and Mr. Xi are scheduled to meet in late March or early April. Of course, requesting that Mr. Xi respect inalienable human rights or abide by treaty obligations and international law would be futile.

Mr. Trump could ask that Mr. Lai be released as an act of mercy, or a goodwill gesture, or just as a personal favor to Mr. Trump, who has said the two men have “always had a great relationship.”

If Mr. Xi agrees, that would suggest he wants to put Sino-American relations on a more stable footing, at least for now.

On the other hand, if Mr. Xi refuses, if he is adamant that Mr. Lai live out his final years alone in a cell rather than with his children and grandchildren, then we, not least Mr. Trump, should understand how intense his hostility is to individuals and nations that refuse to kowtow to him and his Communist Party.

• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.