Jimmy Lai sentenced amid fabrication he called for 'nuclear strike'

In all the reports from Beijing's official media on the 20-year prison sentence handed down on 9 February to the Hong Kong entrepreneur, a public interview from 2019 is deliberately misrepresented. To justify the harsh sentence with words that the founder of Apple Daily never said. Instead, they are silent about what he said that day about the link between his Christian faith and the struggle for freedom and justice.

Milan (AsiaNews) - Over the past two days, voices from around the world have been raised in outrage at the 20-year prison sentence handed down on 9 February to Jimmy Lai, the 78-year-old Catholic entrepreneur from Hong Kong and founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, which was shut down in 2021 under the National Security Law imposed by the People's Republic of China.

But Beijing has not been silent either. Since the days leading up to the announcement of the sentence, the Chinese state media have focused their narrative on a very specific claim, which can now be found everywhere, even on pro-Beijing social media profiles: Jimmy Lai is not simply a pro-democracy activist, but a threat to national security “because he even called for a nuclear bombing of China”.

For example, an article commenting on Jimmy Lai's conviction on the website of CGTN, the English-language channel of Chinese state television, reads: "In July 2019, during a forum hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a US think tank, he publicly urged the United States to use nuclear weapons against China, his own country.

Even the American moderator was forced to interrupt his speech because of its extremely radical nature. Openly calling on the United States to launch a nuclear attack against China goes beyond treason. From the point of view of international law, it constitutes a crime against humanity, given Lai's total disregard for the catastrophic destruction that a nuclear war would cause."

The meaning is clear: doesn't it seem fair to sentence such an extremist to 20 years in prison?

But this media operation sums up in a single sentence the whole grotesque construction behind this “exemplary” trial wanted by Beijing. As one might imagine, a man like Jimmy Lai, born in Guangdong and who has consistently fought throughout his life to defend human rights in the People's Republic of China as well as in Hong Kong, has never called for nuclear bombing of China.

Anyone can see this for themselves: there is a video and a full transcript of what was said at the aforementioned forum held in English in Washington in July 2019. When Jonathan Schanzer, director of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, asked him what kind of support he was seeking from US politicians, Jimmy Lai replied:

"It's like when Kennedy went to Berlin and said, “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”, ed.). How much confidence and hope that gave the Berliners to face the threat of the Soviet Union at that time. We need the same thing. We need support. We need confidence. We need hope. We need to know that America is on our side. By supporting us, America also strengthens its own moral authority, because we are the only place in China, a small island in China, that shares your values, that is fighting the same war with China as you are."

‘If we think that today we are starting a Cold War with China,’ Jimmy Lai continued, "a Cold War that is a war of opposing values, and that we are on your side, sacrificing our lives, our freedom, everything we have, fighting this war on the front line for you, shouldn't you support us? This is something America needs to understand: not only support us, but use its moral authority in this cold war to win it from the outset, because they have nothing. It's as if they are going into battle without any weapons, while you have nuclear weapons. You can finish them off in a minute."

One can obviously debate this view of US-China relations and the appropriateness of Jimmy Lai's hyperbole. But to use these words to say that he “wanted to bomb China with atomic bombs” is a clear misrepresentation. From the video, it is also clear that there was no interruption of the speech, because everyone understood what he meant.

Jimmy Lai himself then – on 5 March 2025, during questioning at the trial – when asked what he meant in that interview by the expression ‘You can finish them off in a minute’, replied that he believed the United States could defeat them by using ‘moral authority’, which he described as a ‘vital weapon’ that China did not have. He added that the claim that Hong Kong was “fighting on the front line” in a new Cold War with China was also an “exaggeration” and “a way of constructing a narrative”.

What Beijing will never mention, however, is another passage from that July 2019 interview. The one in which Jimmy Lai talked about the role of his faith in the battle for democracy: ‘I come from a very devout family,’ he explained. "I became a Catholic simply because of my family's influence. At the time, I hadn't thought about it very clearly, but I instinctively felt that I needed the strength of faith, because everyone was telling me that if they arrested ten people, I would be one of them. So I thought that if I ended up in prison and had faith, maybe I could hold out longer, but that wasn't exactly what I was thinking. However, I believe that I became a Catholic in a natural way, and I think that faith gave me an even stronger sense of justice to fight for. I don't have to worry. If I truly have a God in whom I believe, a faith to which I can entrust my whole life, all I have to do is simply do the right thing.

• Hong Kong
• China
• Jimmy Lai
• nuclear power
• justice
• human rights
• Apple Daily