His future is uncertain: Jimmy Lai
Photo: AP / DPAThe Chinese censors no longer bothered to suppress the first international comments. While the screen almost always goes black when Western news channels report from Hong Kong, this message initially went uncensored on Monday morning in China: Jimmy Lai arrested - Hong Kong's pro-democratic media tycoon, a "bitter government critic," as the BBC aptly called him. "Icy" is the atmosphere that is spreading in the city now, five weeks after the new State Security Act was promulgated.
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The police took him out of his house at seven in the morning, and they also arrested two of his sons. At the same time, the offices of "Next Media" were searched, Lai's publishing house, where, among other things, "Apple Daily" is produced, the last bastion of the once many openly China-critical newspapers in Hong Kong.
It is the most massive attack by the authorities on Hong Kong's media to date - and Jimmy Lai the most prominent representative of the Democratic camp, arrested for violating the new security law. He is suspected of "colluding with foreign powers". If convicted, he faces three to ten years, and if his case is classified as "serious", even life imprisonment.
Jimmy Lai has been arrested several times for minor offenses such as participating in unauthorized demonstrations. So far he has always been released on bail. That is not to be expected under the new State Security Act. It is even possible that he will be tried not in Hong Kong but in mainland China. "Lai will most likely face a heavy sentence," announced the Beijing Global Times.
For many Hong Kongers a hero, for many Chinese an enemy: Jimmy Lay
Photo: Justin Jin / AGENCY FOCUS / DER SPIEGELLai has long known that he was in the crosshairs of the Chinese State Security. No Hong Kong activist or opposition politician has demonized Beijing's propaganda like him. The Beijing Global Times called him a "modern traitor" on Monday, and that is one of the lesser insults that have been thrown at him for years. Chinese nationalists see Lai as the leader of the "Gang of Four", a group of elderly activists who Beijing accuses of inciting Hong Kong's youth against the fatherland.
In truth, Lai, a tall man with a powerful voice, athletic even in old age, embodies many qualities that particularly impress young Chinese: fled the mainland to Hong Kong at the age of 13, where he made it from child laborer to billionaire. At the beginning of the eighties he founded the textile company "Giordano", which he sold in the nineties - and from then on put the money into building a large media holding company.
"We go to the last, whether it's heaven or hell"
Jimmy Lai
Lai is confident, loud and boisterous like the headlines in some of his newspapers - the exact opposite of the traditionally discreet Hong Kong tycoons. Politically, he was mainly shaped by the suppression of the Tiananmen uprising in 1989. Since then he has never left any doubt about his opposition to the Communist Party. China was "evil," he told SPIEGEL at a meeting during the Hong Kong summer of 2019 protests, "an enemy that the West has not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union."
He was impressed by the "spirit of martyrdom" with which radical protesters stood in the way of the police. He also expects to go to jail one day and is ready to "take responsibility. That is our moral duty. We go to the last, whether it is heaven or hell".
Even among Lai's friends, not all share the harshness of his judgments. But as uncompromising as he is politically, Jimmy Lai is just as authoritative in his personal dealings. Until recently he used to receive guests at home, preferably for breakfast. The furnishings in his Bauhaus villa in the Kowloon district - traditional Chinese furniture and fine ink paintings - suggested a scholar or art dealer rather than a fearless oppositionist.
But Lai remained fearless to the end. When Beijing decided at the end of May to impose the new State Security Act on Hong Kong and some people in the city thought about deleting their chat histories, Lai demonstratively opened a Twitter account. He canceled his last ten posts two days ago. "Who threatens the unity of a nation?" he asked in a retweet of an "Apple Daily" story about a Chinese activist. "A murderous regime oppresses decent people (and) should be replaced, otherwise it will replace us."
"Autumn has begun"
User in the Chinese short message service Weibo
Jimmy Lai has lived dangerously and under hostile watch for years. Almost every day groups of Beijing-loyal demonstrators stood in front of his house and verbally abused him. Some followed him in the car when he drove off; Last September, strangers even threw an incendiary device over the garden wall. The next morning, Lai put a fire extinguisher in the living room and shrugged: "It won't be the last time."
In addition to violating the new security law, the authorities are apparently preparing a fraud charge against Lai - Beijing seems to want to make sure that Hong Kong's judiciary does not release him on bail again.
"Hong Kong's police couldn't do much against you," commented a user on the Chinese short message service Weibo. "The security law can."
Another wrote: "Autumn has begun."
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