Jimmy Lai turns 76 next week. The entrepreneur and founder of the now-defunct, regime-torquing Apple Daily will spend his birthday as he has spent the last hundreds of days and nights: in a Chinese jail awaiting trial. That is scheduled for December 13.The man embodying dissent and the fight for freedom in Hong Kong — a distinction shared with the aged Cardinal Joseph Zen, recently convicted of failing to file proper paperwork for an organization supporting the island’s protests — has been charged with violating the regime’s national security law.
Long before he joined the millions-strong Hong Kong street protests that captivated global audiences before Covid came down, Lai became known in American circles courtesy of the Acton Institute, with whom he shared a passion for free markets and all-around freedom.