One Thing I Really Hoped Might Happen This Week

I keep thinking of Jimmy Lai, who was born in China and became a billionaire in Hong Kong. 

Lai’s well-off family was decimated after the Communist takeover in 1949. Legend has it that he was working as a child porter at a train station when a visitor from Hong Kong tipped him with a piece of chocolate. At that moment, he’s said, he set his sights on what he imagined to be a land of milk and honey—and, at age 12, he went to Hong Kong alone, as a stowaway. There, he became a child laborer in the garment industry, worked his way up at the factory, and, decades later, went on to found the global fashion brand, Giordano. 

Lai then went all in on pro-democracy media: in the years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, Lai started Next Magazine, and in the run-up to the 1997 handover (when the U.K. turned Hong Kong back to China) he started Apple Daily. Both publications lured readers in with plain language, paparazzi pics, and juicy gossip—and both were unflinching in their criticism of Beijing. 

By the time Lai personally took to the streets as a pro-Democracy protester in 2014, he had already withstood years of attempted silencing, including attacks on his home, car, and offices as well as (CCP-orchestrated, one assumes) advertiser boycotts. 

At this very moment, Lai sits in Stanley Prison, continuing to serve the 20-year sentence that for a man his age (78) is almost certainly the same as a life sentence.

According to his son Sebastien and his daughter Claire, he is sustained by the conviction that democracy was worth fighting for and by his Catholic faith. In prison, he writes and draws, which is why it makes sense to me—but not to many—that he has requested solitary confinement. 

Can you imagine any U.S. based billionaire taking such a principled path? I cannot—and I wonder: why? What makes Lai such an unusual billionaire? Is it his faith? Is it because those grim, pre-chocolate years gave him an appreciation for democratic principles that our billionaires…take for granted? 

During the China summit this week, for all Trump’s obvious weakness, I hoped with all my might that he would at least succeed at convincing Xi to release Lai. To be clear: I didn’t think Trump cared one iota about Lai—but Trump likes, and needs, a win. Lai’s release would have been received with wild, bipartisan applause. 

Trump did not succeed in freeing Lai. Worse: as I think of the five or six billionaires who accompanied Trump to China, I imagine their fellow magnate was far from their minds. They were there to do business.