Former publisher Jimmy Lai has taken the stand in his trial under Hong Kong’s national security law, breaking a four-year silence with an affirmation of the city’s right to freedom, democracy and the rule of law. But he denied using his Apple Daily newspaper or overseas connections to influence other countries’ policies towards Hong Kong or China.
“The core values of Apple Daily was actually the core value of the people of Hong Kong,” he told the court. “Freedom, the pursuit of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly.”
Mr Lai (76) faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment if he is convicted of two charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and another of conspiracy to print and distribute seditious publications. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and under examination by his counsel Steven Kwan, he rejected the prosecution’s description of him as a political figure.
“I consider myself a businessman and a social activist,” he said.
Mr Lai’s is the most high-profile case brought under the national security law which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 following months of pro-democracy street protests the previous year. Although Hong Kong has a common law justice system, national security trials are heard by a panel of three judges, hand-picked by the city’s chief executive, without a jury.
On Tuesday, 45 former politicians and democracy activists received long jail sentences after they were convicted under the national security law for trying to organise primaries ahead of legislative elections. Mr Lai has been detained for almost four years since his arrest in December 2020, with most of that time spent in solitary confinement.
A self-made millionaire who fled mainland China to Hong Kong as a child after the Communist Party came to power in 1949, Mr Lai made his fortune in the clothing business. But he told the court that he shifted his focus to publishing after the violent suppression of student demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989.
“I started a media business because after June 4th, I thought it was a good opportunity for somebody like me, a businessman who has made some money today, to participate in delivering information, which I think is freedom,” he said.
“Because the more information you have, the more you are in the know, the more you’re free.”
The prosecution contends that Mr Lai used Apple Daily to “pollute the minds” of its readers with seditious material designed to undermine the authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing. And it mapped out a web of international contacts in the United States, Britain and Taiwan it claimed Mr Lai used to influence policy towards Hong Kong and China.
Mr Lai said he gave money to political parties in Hong Kong but had never donated to any political parties in other countries. And he denied using contacts such as former Bush administration officials John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz to persuade Washington to take any action beyond speaking out about Hong Kong.
Mr Lai acknowledged, however, that he supported Donald Trump and the Republicans in their policy towards China and that he had hoped the incoming US president would stop Beijing from imposing the national security law on Hong Kong.
“Maybe just ask China not to do it or whatever. A call to China, a call to [president] Xi Jinping, whatever,” he said.
He said he had paid Mr Wolfowitz to brief Taiwan’s former president Tsai Ing-wen on how to deal with the Trump administration because he wanted to help Taiwan.
“Because Taiwan is the only democracy of Chinese people, the whole history of Chinese people,” he said.
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