Progressing from child labourer to billionaire, Lai used his power and wealth to promote democracy, which ultimately pitted him against authorities in Beijing
On Monday, a Hong Kong court convicted Jimmy Lai of national security offences, the end to a landmark trial for the city and its hobbled protest movement.
The verdict was expected. Long a thorn in the side of Beijing, Lai, a 78-year-old media tycoon and activist, was a primary target of the most recent and definitive crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Authorities cast him as a traitor and a criminal.
Lai’s trial was one of the last unfinished national security prosecutions of Hong Kong’s high profile activists, over their involvement in the 2019 protests. Hundreds of activists, lawyers, and politicians have been pursued and jailed, or chased into exile. But few have captured global attention like Lai, whose life and career has developed in tangent with Hong Kong’s sputtering walk towards democracy, and then its fall.
“The trajectory of his life reflects the history of Hong Kong itself,” said Kevin Yam, a Australian-Hong Kong lawyer, who is subject to a Hong Kong arrest warrant for his pro-democracy activism.
