10 ms·

Jimmy Lai Is a Martyr for Freedom

386 points by mooreds 11mo ago

fibers 11mo ago
Headline seems overstated.
- pavlov 11mo ago
  From the article: “He may be sentenced to die in prison in connection with his efforts promoting liberty in China.” Martyr doesn’t sound like overstatement if that happens.
- idiotsecant 11mo ago
  This man will spend the rest of his (possibly short?) life in prison for the crime of publishing ideas that the government didn't like. He chose to stay in hong kong defending the principles that mattered to him instead of abandoning his principles and fleeing to the UK, which was on option entirely open to him. Explain why you think it's overstated.
- bmelton 11mo ago
  It seems accurate and unsensational here I think perhaps we've lionized the term martyr to mean too many things, but his actions seem in line with the dictionary definition
- ch4s3 11mo ago
  Jimmy Lai is more courageous and principled than anyone you've probably ever met in your life. He'll die in prison for his belief that speech should be free in Hong Kong.
  - fibers 11mo ago
    Appeals to emotions won't get you anywhere. What else is next, "We NEED to reelect Trump to restore Christendom in the West!!!"?
    - ch4s3 11mo ago
      It isn't an appeal to emotion. Jimmy Lai stood up for free speech in Hong Kong, factually and it paying with his life. I'm simply pointing out that you have probably never seen real courage or conviction in your life and aren't in a good position to judge Jimmy Lai. Your whole posting history is just inflammatory claims that you rarely stand behind. I keep bumping into you doing this, it's a bad look.
  - _tik_ 11mo ago
    I will not called Jimmy Lai as principled based on how he run his news outlet. You can just simply check on wikipedia his reputationa and his news outlet reputation. This is one from Jimmy Lai https://hongkongfp.com/2020/11/02/explainer-apple-dailys-jimmy-lai-his-aide-who-quit-and-the-anonymous-joe-biden-china-dossier/ https://hongkongfp.com/2020/11/02/explainer-apple-dailys-jim...
imwillofficial 11mo ago
[flagged]
- thenthenthen 11mo ago
  Context? RFA?
lenerdenator 11mo ago
If there was one critical miscalculation the West (particularly the US) made in the last 40 years, it was thinking that investment in China would equal liberalization and democratic reforms. There was a mistaking of capitalism for human rights. While it is a human right to own property and use it to rationally pursue one's self-interests, that does not mean that capitalism in its current form is conducive to that for the greatest number of people, or to the evolution of other human rights in the societies in which capitalism is practiced. If investment was the key to liberalization, we would have seen far greater investment behind the then-fallen Iron Curtain, where countries had actively turned their backs on command economies. The cynic in me thinks that capital didn't like just how that had turned out. If a country's people could either violently (Romania) or peacefully (almost everywhere else) remove such totalitarian systems of politics and economics, they could also reject methods of accumulating capital that might run afoul of their values. China, on the other hand, had not moved away from command economics at the time. Instead, the result was state capitalism. People were free to try new things that could create economic expansion, but only in a way that served the needs of the state. Anything else would be handled with the same totalitarian methods that political dissidents and class enemies were once handled with under Mao. While this has ebbed and flowed over the years, it essentially remains the system in place. Lai is a victim of this miscalculation.
- alephnerd 11mo ago
  > it was thinking that investment in China would equal liberalization and democratic reforms... That's a rewriting of history and a common misconception I've seen repeated ad nauseam both on HN and (what I assume is it's origin) Reddit. The West (primarily the US and then-West Germany) began investing in China in the 1970s to 1989 explicitly as a bulwark against the USSR [0] due to the Sino-Soviet Split. The "economic democratization" argument was a 1990s-era framing to reduce opposition to the PRC joining GATT/WTO [1] along with to reduce the sanctions enforced following the Tienanmen Square massacre [2]. George HW Bush as well as Clinton's NSC Asia Director Kenneth Lieberthal were both massive Chinaphiles, and played a major role in cementing the position China is in today. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264332 [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/20/opinion/IHT-america-needs-china-in-gatt-and-the-world-trade-organizaiton.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/20/opinion/IHT-america-needs... [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/14/opinion/forget-the-tiananmen-fixation.html https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/14/opinion/forget-the-tianan...
shevy-java 11mo ago
The sinomarxist mono-party is kind of doing their powerplay here. The interesting thing is that the "two systems, one state" claim was revealed to have been a lie. I can kind of understand the position of China too, mind you - after all there was a war against the UK empire and they forced ceding territory (e. g. Hong Kong). But that still does not nullify the local's people preferences, and Beijing simply bulldozered through by force here. That's the total antithesis to freedom. Xi will focus on Taiwan next - that is also clear. It is in the "DNA" of the sinomarxistic philosophy (though one can wonder how much marxism with chinese focus is still left; it's kind of capitalistic led by a dictatorship. Oddly enough the USA is also transitioning to this by the tech-bros oligarchs.) We kind of see that freedoms are being eroded. I don't know if that was always the case, or whether it just happens now more rapidly so; or is reported more often, but in the late 1990s I would say we had more freedoms, globally, than right now. Somehow the trend is going towards less freedom. Putin invading Ukraine, occupying land and killing people there is also highly similar to the pretext of the second world war, with the invasion of the Sudetenland by Germany, and then the Gleiwitz lie to sell the invasion of Poland. I think the only real difference here is that more countries have nukes. And smaller countries are kind of put in a dilemma now, since they can not offset bigger countries without nukes.
- Barrin92 11mo ago
  >But that still does not nullify the local's people preferences, One reason why Lai's fate has only limited impact is because it doesn't resonate that strongly with working people for whom Hong Kong isn't an example of upward prosperity. His rags to riches 'boomer optimism' appeals more to the Western audience than to someone who has lived in the stagnation of Hong Kong of the last few decades, where ambitious tech talent now migrates to the mainland. Likewise on the mainland the youth is significantly less interested in emulating the West or old Hong Kong which to them is not a symbol of dynamism.
- maxglute 11mo ago
  1Country2Systems is still in place, just the version that was always meant to be, not the lie western propaganda sold. HK failed their half of 2System by not implementing national security law on their accord after 20 years of failures and it became obvious they were never going to do it out of own volition. Frankly if local preferences is to be under national security umbrella and be free to commit treason their preferences should be completely nullified because that's unserious position. Hence PRC, after UNREASONABLE patience had shove it down their throats under 1C mandate (1C supercedes 2S) - HK only ever had "high" degree of autonomy, not full autonomy. It was always in Beijing's prerogative to force HK to eat their vegetables, it just took 20 years of HK incompetence before Beijing ran of patience. AKA the 1C2S muh HK has full autonomy under Sino British declaration tier of retarded western propaganda fed to useful idiots was a lie and got dispelled.
10xDev 11mo ago
>The dissident was convicted in Hong Kong earlier this week of two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces >he also met with then–Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; at trial, Lai testified that he had asked them to voice their support for Hong Kong. Yeah, I don't think that's going to help convince anyone buddy.
- 10xDev 11mo ago
  Imagine if Jensen Huang started meeting Xi Jinping.
  - axus 11mo ago
    Nothing would happen to Mr. Huang, he's free to talk to anyone.
    - repeekad 11mo ago
      Too bad Mr. Lai was not
    - 10xDev 11mo ago
      Nvidia has become an incredibly important strategic and economic American asset. If it ever seemed that the CEO of such an asset was colluding with a foreign nation (especially China), you can bet things wouldn't end too well. People have been done for far less, just look at what happened to Suchir Balaji which got covered up.
  - budududuroiu 11mo ago
    He wouldn't be meeting Xi, as it's not a state visit, but he did meet the Vice Premier, He Lifeng. Elon also met Li Qiang.
  - shimman 11mo ago
    No need, he has already convinced Trump to sell chips to China unabated. Why meet at this point?
  - 11mo ago
anon291 11mo ago
Never give up speech.
QGQBGdeZREunxLe 11mo ago
Britain had the chance to liberalize Hong Kong before the handover negotiations even began. You can thank Murray MacLehose for the mess they're in now. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2025/06/13/the-empires-last-abdication-how-britain-failed-hong-kongs-democracy/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2025/06/13/the-empires-last-ab...
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
  > Britain had the chance to liberalize Hong Kong before the handover How would it have made a difference when the Chinese military invaded?
- nine_k 11mo ago
  UK offered a rather simple pathway to immigrating to the UK for most Hong Kong residents [1]. But the choice between the stagnant UK and the booming mainland China was not obvious for everyone in late the 1990s, when China seemed to be democratizing more and more (despite the Tiananmen massacre), and growing richer by the day. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_(Overseas) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_(Overseas)
  - z2 11mo ago
    It was a far cry from the full Portuguese citizenship offered for Macau, both in the latter's lack of conditions on acquisition (beyond being over age 15 at the handover), and in passing it on to descendants. https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Portugal-give-full-citizenship-to-Macau-residents-born-pre-1984-but-the-British-did-not-do-the-same-to-Hong-Kong-residents https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Portugal-give-full-citizenship...
  - btilly 11mo ago
    They had multiple pathways. The top three destinations were Canada, the USA, and Australia. These locations offered a major benefit over the UK - they were on trade routes along which people from Hong Kong were already doing business. Canada was particularly affected. It absorbed the most immigrants, they were a larger share of the population, and this was a major increase in ethnic diversity. The resulting cultural clashes were sometimes an issue. Here is one that literally doubled car insurance rates in British Columbia around the time I left. Three cars, 2 in front with the left-hand car being driven by a Canadian, and the back car driven by a recent immigrant. The immigrant sees the opportunity to pass, swings out into oncoming traffic, and guns it. Leaving just a few inches of room. Normal Hong Kong driving. The Canadian has no idea that this is happening until OMG I'M ABOUT TO BE HIT! The Canadian then swerves right to avoid the emergency, and hits the car on the right. The immigrant drives off. Presumably wondering about these crazy Canadians who don't know how to drive. Everyone involved behaved reasonably for how they were used to driving. But the combination worked out very poorly...
maxglute 11mo ago
[flagged]
- YC34987349872 11mo ago
  Reminds me of the recent Nobel "Peace" Prize winner, Corina Machado, who begged America and Israel to bomb her own country (Venezuela). If these people are supposed to be our heroes then I'll go with the villians.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- paganel 11mo ago
  It's a good thing that the anti-comprador discourse has find its way on this forum, too, out here in Eastern Europe they (the compradors, that is) occupy almost all positions of power, it's really tiring. Back to the article, it only took me one click to find this info about its author [1]: > Prior to his career in journalism, Binion worked as a contractor at NATO, They're not even trying to hide it anymore, like in the good old days of the Paris Review. [1] https://reason.com/people/billy-binion/ https://reason.com/people/billy-binion/
lbrito 11mo ago
Doesn't martyrdom imply, um, death? I don't care about the specific politics, and I don't know his biography. You can love this man and hate China with the power of every cell in your body. But calling anyone a martyr, even with poetic license, has very specific connotations which don't seem to apply here.
- Snild 11mo ago
  Not necessarily: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/martyr https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/martyr > a person who suffers very much or is killed because of their religious or political beliefs, and is often admired because of it https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/martyr https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/martyr > 2: a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- everdrive 11mo ago
  Would you be you happier with "soon-to-be-martyr" or "martyr-in-the-making" ?
  - lbrito 11mo ago
    Snarkiness is not appreciated here. Well, at least officially. No, that wouldn't make me happy. A world without suffering and oppression would make me happy, but failing that, lets at least try to use words appropriately.
    - zdragnar 11mo ago
      He will likely die in prison, either from old age, poor conditions or shenanigans. He could have fled, but chose not to. Calling him a martyr isn't too much of a stretch.
pessimizer 11mo ago
[flagged]
- mopsi 11mo ago
  > Meanwhile, the EU just unpersoned a Swiss citizen, a writer, Jacques Baud*, for not taking the European side in the US-Russia conflict. Not for lying about it, but simply for not taking the European side. He was not "unpersoned", whatever that means, but sanctioned for being a professional Kremlin troll and for spreading lies such as claiming that the Bucha massacre was committed by British and Ukrainian secret services, that the war actually started a week earlier with a Ukrainian offensive that the entire world has suppressed, and so on. This is not even a matter of viewpoint, but a malicious flood of obvious lies.[1] Such superspreaders of lies are exactly the kind of people who should be sanctioned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
GuinansEyebrows 11mo ago
a capitalist is a martyr for capitalism when they knowingly break laws in the country they live in? i'm no fan of authoritarianism but come on. this article is such typical Reason dreck.
- zdragnar 11mo ago
  He's not being imprisoned for being a capitalist, engaging in capitalism, or anything of the like. This is a pretty lame take.
nickdothutton 11mo ago
When the UK handed back HK, the Chinese who are nothing if not wiley, understood that they needed to maintain intelligence, surveillance, and some kind of institutional knowledge of the various organised crime groups, certain individuals with borderline business interests, that sort of thing. They offered the British police officers houses, stipends, and other incentives to stick around and clue-in the incoming crop of officials, domestic intelligence officers, and cutouts/go-betweens. Something of an untold story. Would make a great streaming series.
- cedws 11mo ago
  I'm interested in how the takeover happened on the inside. How do you take control of a country with minimal drama when even small corporate takeovers get so messy? I assume there's been a lot of work to root out internal dissent, install aligned individuals, take control of computer systems. Even though the UK handed HK to China, there's got to have been people with strong feelings that created roadblocks along the way.
  - mandeepj 11mo ago
    > there's got to have been people with strong feelings that created roadblocks along the way. Look into 2019 protests
    - throw5g4e567 11mo ago
      It was big at the time, but ended up being a minor blip, and from what I read, there were no actual deaths caused by the police. There was one guy who fell down a high rise garage and there was a street cleaner who was killed by the protesters. Compare that to when the British were taking over Hong Kong, and hundreds of protesters were killed. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if the pandemic didn’t occur soon after. What’s crazy is the trigger was a Hong Kong national who killed his girlfriend in Taiwan. Taiwan wanted to extradite him but there was no law in place to do so. Apparently the killer is still free today.
      - 11mo ago
agentifysh 11mo ago
When I see the Hong Kong story, I can't help but feel worried for South Korea right now. It's like seeing Hong Kong starting all over again. Only saving grace is that the Korean peninsula has far too much of a strategic value to US military but ultimately its worrying that a Korean president will arrest/sue Korean citizens for criticizing China but not America.
- bdangubic 11mo ago
  You can F with America all you want. You absolutely cannot F with China.
- garlicmachine 11mo ago
  No, you’ve got it wrong. That kind of situation doesn’t exist. They only said that, in areas heavily visited by Chinese tourists, you can’t use loudspeakers to shout racist things at tourists within a certain radius of tourist sites. And why would you think you can’t insult the U.S. or China, or any other country? Even 10 minutes ago, I opened my window and yelled “F* C*,” and nothing happened.
  - vx_r 11mo ago
    No, you've got it wrong. The law has not passed just yet. It will happen amid Christmas-eve when everyone is busy celebrating.
tammakiiroha 11mo ago
I don't think he died for so‑called freedom; to me he is a traitor. When someone in your country uses the banner of liberating freedom to collude with foreign powers and attempts to split the country, do you still consider him some noble martyr who died for freedom?
- Arn_Thor 11mo ago
  And to most Hong Kongers (at least judging by the last local election after the 2019 protests), anone who collaborated with pro-mainland forces to kill one-country-two-systems and stifle the free speech guaranteed under the handover could be considered traitors. You know what would settle Hong Kong's status once and for all? Free and fair elections. Then the people could choose to align with the mainland, or not. But I have a hunch you wouldn't be so keen on that.
Gathering6678 11mo ago
As a native Chinese, the recent years of US politics definitely made me more unsympathetic for people like Jimmy Lai and the (for lack of better words) campaigns related to them, and, at least from my personal experience, my sentiment (that such people and campaigns are inconsequential at best) is shared amongst a significant portion of Chinese.
- BrenBarn 11mo ago
  Can you elaborate on why you say that? What is it about US politics that has influenced your views on Lai and others like him?
  - jambutters 11mo ago
    I mean, we went after Assange and Snowden who are in a gray area. Jimmy Lai actually went to top US officials and advocated military assistance to coup the government. No nation would ever go easy on that and it's scary to see all these comments on HN are mindlessly chanting without actually more research
    - n4r9 11mo ago
      > advocated military assistance to coup the government Is there source evidence for this? I keep hearing various different things Jimmy supposedly advocated or asked for, but very little actual source.
      - jambutters 11mo ago
        https://www.reddit.com/r/Hong_Kong/comments/u8692j/jimmy_lai_urges_the_us_to_use_nuclear_weapons_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Hong_Kong/comments/u8692j/jimmy_lai... Sidenote: The riots went too out of control and one of em threw a brick which hit an old street cleaners head. https://www.reddit.com/r/Hong_Kong/comments/dwmc76/rioters_threw_brick_to_kill_the_old_cleaner_rip/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Hong_Kong/comments/dwmc76/rioters_t...
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
vx_r 11mo ago
I am afraid that the same thing is happening in South Korea right now. This is a cry for help. "Lawmakers would go on to formally approve the national security law, essentially a foregone conclusion, about three weeks later. The legislation broadly criminalized political dissent and hamstrung the civil liberties that once distinguished Hong Kong from mainland China. A defense of those freedoms—which were already under increasing attack—had come to define Lai's legacy. Lai not only unapologetically advanced democracy and free expression in the region, but he also met with then–Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; at trial, Lai testified that he had asked them to voice their support for Hong Kong. He knew the law was coming, and he knew what it meant for him." The same 'National Security Law' will pass soon. Who decides what's right or wrong? It defeats freedom of speech.
SZJX 11mo ago
> It demands people ask: Do you prefer Hong Kong's past? Or its future? Such a formulation is either sheer ignorance or worse, full-on deliberate cynicism. Hong Kong's "past" was a typical colony where the governor was appointed by the British government with no local input whatsoever, and where any assembly of more than 6 people was deemed illegal and brutally suppressed. The type of thing that people like Gandhi (who are apparently heroes in contemporary narratives) fought against throughout their lives. The British government only started changing the laws and handing locals more political freedom and freedom of speech once they knew that Hong Kong was returning to China no matter what (surprise, surprise). In all such propaganda you see now, they try to construct a "past" that never existed, and apparently a lot of the young generation who never experienced the old days fell for it. But the older generation would tell them outright that "Hong Kong's past" is far less rosy than what's made out to be. It's just astonishing when you see the amount of people waving British and American flags on the streets during the protests. What kind of "fight for freedom and independence" is that? Just imagine the reaction to protesters in a US territory or a European region (Catalonia etc.) waving Russian or Chinese flags.
- ksec 11mo ago
  >But the older generation would tell them outright that "Hong Kong's past" is far less rosy than what's made out to be. Define older Generation. Because there are plenty of people who lived through 60s to 90s to tell you otherwise.
  - throw4r3ett 11mo ago
    Those are the people who survived and worked with the colonial government. Many who protested were killed. The simple fact is that during the 60s, native Hongkongers were second class citizens.
pointbob 11mo ago
India had poverty. But India also had democracy. And today India is doing alright. Why did the China need communism to get ahead. There's no moral compass in communism. Just state totality.

386 points by mooreds 11mo ago

fibers 11mo ago

Headline seems overstated.

pavlov 11mo ago
From the article: “He may be sentenced to die in prison in connection with his efforts promoting liberty in China.” Martyr doesn’t sound like overstatement if that happens.
idiotsecant 11mo ago
This man will spend the rest of his (possibly short?) life in prison for the crime of publishing ideas that the government didn't like. He chose to stay in hong kong defending the principles that mattered to him instead of abandoning his principles and fleeing to the UK, which was on option entirely open to him. Explain why you think it's overstated.
bmelton 11mo ago
It seems accurate and unsensational here I think perhaps we've lionized the term martyr to mean too many things, but his actions seem in line with the dictionary definition
ch4s3 11mo ago
Jimmy Lai is more courageous and principled than anyone you've probably ever met in your life. He'll die in prison for his belief that speech should be free in Hong Kong.
- fibers 11mo ago
  Appeals to emotions won't get you anywhere. What else is next, "We NEED to reelect Trump to restore Christendom in the West!!!"?
  - ch4s3 11mo ago
    It isn't an appeal to emotion. Jimmy Lai stood up for free speech in Hong Kong, factually and it paying with his life. I'm simply pointing out that you have probably never seen real courage or conviction in your life and aren't in a good position to judge Jimmy Lai. Your whole posting history is just inflammatory claims that you rarely stand behind. I keep bumping into you doing this, it's a bad look.
- _tik_ 11mo ago
  I will not called Jimmy Lai as principled based on how he run his news outlet. You can just simply check on wikipedia his reputationa and his news outlet reputation. This is one from Jimmy Lai https://hongkongfp.com/2020/11/02/explainer-apple-dailys-jimmy-lai-his-aide-who-quit-and-the-anonymous-joe-biden-china-dossier/ https://hongkongfp.com/2020/11/02/explainer-apple-dailys-jim...

imwillofficial 11mo ago

[flagged]

thenthenthen 11mo ago
Context? RFA?

lenerdenator 11mo ago

If there was one critical miscalculation the West (particularly the US) made in the last 40 years, it was thinking that investment in China would equal liberalization and democratic reforms. There was a mistaking of capitalism for human rights. While it is a human right to own property and use it to rationally pursue one's self-interests, that does not mean that capitalism in its current form is conducive to that for the greatest number of people, or to the evolution of other human rights in the societies in which capitalism is practiced. If investment was the key to liberalization, we would have seen far greater investment behind the then-fallen Iron Curtain, where countries had actively turned their backs on command economies. The cynic in me thinks that capital didn't like just how that had turned out. If a country's people could either violently (Romania) or peacefully (almost everywhere else) remove such totalitarian systems of politics and economics, they could also reject methods of accumulating capital that might run afoul of their values. China, on the other hand, had not moved away from command economics at the time. Instead, the result was state capitalism. People were free to try new things that could create economic expansion, but only in a way that served the needs of the state. Anything else would be handled with the same totalitarian methods that political dissidents and class enemies were once handled with under Mao. While this has ebbed and flowed over the years, it essentially remains the system in place. Lai is a victim of this miscalculation.

alephnerd 11mo ago
> it was thinking that investment in China would equal liberalization and democratic reforms... That's a rewriting of history and a common misconception I've seen repeated ad nauseam both on HN and (what I assume is it's origin) Reddit. The West (primarily the US and then-West Germany) began investing in China in the 1970s to 1989 explicitly as a bulwark against the USSR [0] due to the Sino-Soviet Split. The "economic democratization" argument was a 1990s-era framing to reduce opposition to the PRC joining GATT/WTO [1] along with to reduce the sanctions enforced following the Tienanmen Square massacre [2]. George HW Bush as well as Clinton's NSC Asia Director Kenneth Lieberthal were both massive Chinaphiles, and played a major role in cementing the position China is in today. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264332 [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/20/opinion/IHT-america-needs-china-in-gatt-and-the-world-trade-organizaiton.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/20/opinion/IHT-america-needs... [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/14/opinion/forget-the-tiananmen-fixation.html https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/14/opinion/forget-the-tianan...

shevy-java 11mo ago

The sinomarxist mono-party is kind of doing their powerplay here. The interesting thing is that the "two systems, one state" claim was revealed to have been a lie. I can kind of understand the position of China too, mind you - after all there was a war against the UK empire and they forced ceding territory (e. g. Hong Kong). But that still does not nullify the local's people preferences, and Beijing simply bulldozered through by force here. That's the total antithesis to freedom. Xi will focus on Taiwan next - that is also clear. It is in the "DNA" of the sinomarxistic philosophy (though one can wonder how much marxism with chinese focus is still left; it's kind of capitalistic led by a dictatorship. Oddly enough the USA is also transitioning to this by the tech-bros oligarchs.) We kind of see that freedoms are being eroded. I don't know if that was always the case, or whether it just happens now more rapidly so; or is reported more often, but in the late 1990s I would say we had more freedoms, globally, than right now. Somehow the trend is going towards less freedom. Putin invading Ukraine, occupying land and killing people there is also highly similar to the pretext of the second world war, with the invasion of the Sudetenland by Germany, and then the Gleiwitz lie to sell the invasion of Poland. I think the only real difference here is that more countries have nukes. And smaller countries are kind of put in a dilemma now, since they can not offset bigger countries without nukes.

Barrin92 11mo ago
>But that still does not nullify the local's people preferences, One reason why Lai's fate has only limited impact is because it doesn't resonate that strongly with working people for whom Hong Kong isn't an example of upward prosperity. His rags to riches 'boomer optimism' appeals more to the Western audience than to someone who has lived in the stagnation of Hong Kong of the last few decades, where ambitious tech talent now migrates to the mainland. Likewise on the mainland the youth is significantly less interested in emulating the West or old Hong Kong which to them is not a symbol of dynamism.
maxglute 11mo ago
1Country2Systems is still in place, just the version that was always meant to be, not the lie western propaganda sold. HK failed their half of 2System by not implementing national security law on their accord after 20 years of failures and it became obvious they were never going to do it out of own volition. Frankly if local preferences is to be under national security umbrella and be free to commit treason their preferences should be completely nullified because that's unserious position. Hence PRC, after UNREASONABLE patience had shove it down their throats under 1C mandate (1C supercedes 2S) - HK only ever had "high" degree of autonomy, not full autonomy. It was always in Beijing's prerogative to force HK to eat their vegetables, it just took 20 years of HK incompetence before Beijing ran of patience. AKA the 1C2S muh HK has full autonomy under Sino British declaration tier of retarded western propaganda fed to useful idiots was a lie and got dispelled.

10xDev 11mo ago

>The dissident was convicted in Hong Kong earlier this week of two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces >he also met with then–Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; at trial, Lai testified that he had asked them to voice their support for Hong Kong. Yeah, I don't think that's going to help convince anyone buddy.

10xDev 11mo ago
Imagine if Jensen Huang started meeting Xi Jinping.
- axus 11mo ago
  Nothing would happen to Mr. Huang, he's free to talk to anyone.
  - repeekad 11mo ago
    Too bad Mr. Lai was not
  - 10xDev 11mo ago
    Nvidia has become an incredibly important strategic and economic American asset. If it ever seemed that the CEO of such an asset was colluding with a foreign nation (especially China), you can bet things wouldn't end too well. People have been done for far less, just look at what happened to Suchir Balaji which got covered up.
- budududuroiu 11mo ago
  He wouldn't be meeting Xi, as it's not a state visit, but he did meet the Vice Premier, He Lifeng. Elon also met Li Qiang.
- shimman 11mo ago
  No need, he has already convinced Trump to sell chips to China unabated. Why meet at this point?
- 11mo ago

anon291 11mo ago

Never give up speech.

QGQBGdeZREunxLe 11mo ago

Britain had the chance to liberalize Hong Kong before the handover negotiations even began. You can thank Murray MacLehose for the mess they're in now. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2025/06/13/the-empires-last-abdication-how-britain-failed-hong-kongs-democracy/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2025/06/13/the-empires-last-ab...

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> Britain had the chance to liberalize Hong Kong before the handover How would it have made a difference when the Chinese military invaded?
nine_k 11mo ago
UK offered a rather simple pathway to immigrating to the UK for most Hong Kong residents [1]. But the choice between the stagnant UK and the booming mainland China was not obvious for everyone in late the 1990s, when China seemed to be democratizing more and more (despite the Tiananmen massacre), and growing richer by the day. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_(Overseas) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_(Overseas)
- z2 11mo ago
  It was a far cry from the full Portuguese citizenship offered for Macau, both in the latter's lack of conditions on acquisition (beyond being over age 15 at the handover), and in passing it on to descendants. https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Portugal-give-full-citizenship-to-Macau-residents-born-pre-1984-but-the-British-did-not-do-the-same-to-Hong-Kong-residents https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Portugal-give-full-citizenship...
- btilly 11mo ago
  They had multiple pathways. The top three destinations were Canada, the USA, and Australia. These locations offered a major benefit over the UK - they were on trade routes along which people from Hong Kong were already doing business. Canada was particularly affected. It absorbed the most immigrants, they were a larger share of the population, and this was a major increase in ethnic diversity. The resulting cultural clashes were sometimes an issue. Here is one that literally doubled car insurance rates in British Columbia around the time I left. Three cars, 2 in front with the left-hand car being driven by a Canadian, and the back car driven by a recent immigrant. The immigrant sees the opportunity to pass, swings out into oncoming traffic, and guns it. Leaving just a few inches of room. Normal Hong Kong driving. The Canadian has no idea that this is happening until OMG I'M ABOUT TO BE HIT! The Canadian then swerves right to avoid the emergency, and hits the car on the right. The immigrant drives off. Presumably wondering about these crazy Canadians who don't know how to drive. Everyone involved behaved reasonably for how they were used to driving. But the combination worked out very poorly...

maxglute 11mo ago

[flagged]

YC34987349872 11mo ago
Reminds me of the recent Nobel "Peace" Prize winner, Corina Machado, who begged America and Israel to bomb her own country (Venezuela). If these people are supposed to be our heroes then I'll go with the villians.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
paganel 11mo ago
It's a good thing that the anti-comprador discourse has find its way on this forum, too, out here in Eastern Europe they (the compradors, that is) occupy almost all positions of power, it's really tiring. Back to the article, it only took me one click to find this info about its author [1]: > Prior to his career in journalism, Binion worked as a contractor at NATO, They're not even trying to hide it anymore, like in the good old days of the Paris Review. [1] https://reason.com/people/billy-binion/ https://reason.com/people/billy-binion/

lbrito 11mo ago

Doesn't martyrdom imply, um, death? I don't care about the specific politics, and I don't know his biography. You can love this man and hate China with the power of every cell in your body. But calling anyone a martyr, even with poetic license, has very specific connotations which don't seem to apply here.

Snild 11mo ago
Not necessarily: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/martyr https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/martyr > a person who suffers very much or is killed because of their religious or political beliefs, and is often admired because of it https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/martyr https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/martyr > 2: a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
everdrive 11mo ago
Would you be you happier with "soon-to-be-martyr" or "martyr-in-the-making" ?
- lbrito 11mo ago
  Snarkiness is not appreciated here. Well, at least officially. No, that wouldn't make me happy. A world without suffering and oppression would make me happy, but failing that, lets at least try to use words appropriately.
  - zdragnar 11mo ago
    He will likely die in prison, either from old age, poor conditions or shenanigans. He could have fled, but chose not to. Calling him a martyr isn't too much of a stretch.

pessimizer 11mo ago

[flagged]

mopsi 11mo ago
> Meanwhile, the EU just unpersoned a Swiss citizen, a writer, Jacques Baud*, for not taking the European side in the US-Russia conflict. Not for lying about it, but simply for not taking the European side. He was not "unpersoned", whatever that means, but sanctioned for being a professional Kremlin troll and for spreading lies such as claiming that the Bucha massacre was committed by British and Ukrainian secret services, that the war actually started a week earlier with a Ukrainian offensive that the entire world has suppressed, and so on. This is not even a matter of viewpoint, but a malicious flood of obvious lies.[1] Such superspreaders of lies are exactly the kind of people who should be sanctioned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

GuinansEyebrows 11mo ago

a capitalist is a martyr for capitalism when they knowingly break laws in the country they live in? i'm no fan of authoritarianism but come on. this article is such typical Reason dreck.

zdragnar 11mo ago
He's not being imprisoned for being a capitalist, engaging in capitalism, or anything of the like. This is a pretty lame take.

nickdothutton 11mo ago

When the UK handed back HK, the Chinese who are nothing if not wiley, understood that they needed to maintain intelligence, surveillance, and some kind of institutional knowledge of the various organised crime groups, certain individuals with borderline business interests, that sort of thing. They offered the British police officers houses, stipends, and other incentives to stick around and clue-in the incoming crop of officials, domestic intelligence officers, and cutouts/go-betweens. Something of an untold story. Would make a great streaming series.

cedws 11mo ago
I'm interested in how the takeover happened on the inside. How do you take control of a country with minimal drama when even small corporate takeovers get so messy? I assume there's been a lot of work to root out internal dissent, install aligned individuals, take control of computer systems. Even though the UK handed HK to China, there's got to have been people with strong feelings that created roadblocks along the way.
- mandeepj 11mo ago
  > there's got to have been people with strong feelings that created roadblocks along the way. Look into 2019 protests
  - throw5g4e567 11mo ago
    It was big at the time, but ended up being a minor blip, and from what I read, there were no actual deaths caused by the police. There was one guy who fell down a high rise garage and there was a street cleaner who was killed by the protesters. Compare that to when the British were taking over Hong Kong, and hundreds of protesters were killed. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if the pandemic didn’t occur soon after. What’s crazy is the trigger was a Hong Kong national who killed his girlfriend in Taiwan. Taiwan wanted to extradite him but there was no law in place to do so. Apparently the killer is still free today.
    - 11mo ago

agentifysh 11mo ago

When I see the Hong Kong story, I can't help but feel worried for South Korea right now. It's like seeing Hong Kong starting all over again. Only saving grace is that the Korean peninsula has far too much of a strategic value to US military but ultimately its worrying that a Korean president will arrest/sue Korean citizens for criticizing China but not America.

bdangubic 11mo ago
You can F with America all you want. You absolutely cannot F with China.
garlicmachine 11mo ago
No, you’ve got it wrong. That kind of situation doesn’t exist. They only said that, in areas heavily visited by Chinese tourists, you can’t use loudspeakers to shout racist things at tourists within a certain radius of tourist sites. And why would you think you can’t insult the U.S. or China, or any other country? Even 10 minutes ago, I opened my window and yelled “F* C*,” and nothing happened.
- vx_r 11mo ago
  No, you've got it wrong. The law has not passed just yet. It will happen amid Christmas-eve when everyone is busy celebrating.

tammakiiroha 11mo ago

I don't think he died for so‑called freedom; to me he is a traitor. When someone in your country uses the banner of liberating freedom to collude with foreign powers and attempts to split the country, do you still consider him some noble martyr who died for freedom?

Arn_Thor 11mo ago
And to most Hong Kongers (at least judging by the last local election after the 2019 protests), anone who collaborated with pro-mainland forces to kill one-country-two-systems and stifle the free speech guaranteed under the handover could be considered traitors. You know what would settle Hong Kong's status once and for all? Free and fair elections. Then the people could choose to align with the mainland, or not. But I have a hunch you wouldn't be so keen on that.

Gathering6678 11mo ago

As a native Chinese, the recent years of US politics definitely made me more unsympathetic for people like Jimmy Lai and the (for lack of better words) campaigns related to them, and, at least from my personal experience, my sentiment (that such people and campaigns are inconsequential at best) is shared amongst a significant portion of Chinese.

BrenBarn 11mo ago
Can you elaborate on why you say that? What is it about US politics that has influenced your views on Lai and others like him?
- jambutters 11mo ago
  I mean, we went after Assange and Snowden who are in a gray area. Jimmy Lai actually went to top US officials and advocated military assistance to coup the government. No nation would ever go easy on that and it's scary to see all these comments on HN are mindlessly chanting without actually more research
  - n4r9 11mo ago
    > advocated military assistance to coup the government Is there source evidence for this? I keep hearing various different things Jimmy supposedly advocated or asked for, but very little actual source.
    - jambutters 11mo ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/Hong_Kong/comments/u8692j/jimmy_lai_urges_the_us_to_use_nuclear_weapons_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Hong_Kong/comments/u8692j/jimmy_lai... Sidenote: The riots went too out of control and one of em threw a brick which hit an old street cleaners head. https://www.reddit.com/r/Hong_Kong/comments/dwmc76/rioters_threw_brick_to_kill_the_old_cleaner_rip/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Hong_Kong/comments/dwmc76/rioters_t...

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

vx_r 11mo ago

I am afraid that the same thing is happening in South Korea right now. This is a cry for help. "Lawmakers would go on to formally approve the national security law, essentially a foregone conclusion, about three weeks later. The legislation broadly criminalized political dissent and hamstrung the civil liberties that once distinguished Hong Kong from mainland China. A defense of those freedoms—which were already under increasing attack—had come to define Lai's legacy. Lai not only unapologetically advanced democracy and free expression in the region, but he also met with then–Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; at trial, Lai testified that he had asked them to voice their support for Hong Kong. He knew the law was coming, and he knew what it meant for him." The same 'National Security Law' will pass soon. Who decides what's right or wrong? It defeats freedom of speech.

SZJX 11mo ago

> It demands people ask: Do you prefer Hong Kong's past? Or its future? Such a formulation is either sheer ignorance or worse, full-on deliberate cynicism. Hong Kong's "past" was a typical colony where the governor was appointed by the British government with no local input whatsoever, and where any assembly of more than 6 people was deemed illegal and brutally suppressed. The type of thing that people like Gandhi (who are apparently heroes in contemporary narratives) fought against throughout their lives. The British government only started changing the laws and handing locals more political freedom and freedom of speech once they knew that Hong Kong was returning to China no matter what (surprise, surprise). In all such propaganda you see now, they try to construct a "past" that never existed, and apparently a lot of the young generation who never experienced the old days fell for it. But the older generation would tell them outright that "Hong Kong's past" is far less rosy than what's made out to be. It's just astonishing when you see the amount of people waving British and American flags on the streets during the protests. What kind of "fight for freedom and independence" is that? Just imagine the reaction to protesters in a US territory or a European region (Catalonia etc.) waving Russian or Chinese flags.

ksec 11mo ago
>But the older generation would tell them outright that "Hong Kong's past" is far less rosy than what's made out to be. Define older Generation. Because there are plenty of people who lived through 60s to 90s to tell you otherwise.
- throw4r3ett 11mo ago
  Those are the people who survived and worked with the colonial government. Many who protested were killed. The simple fact is that during the 60s, native Hongkongers were second class citizens.

pointbob 11mo ago

India had poverty. But India also had democracy. And today India is doing alright. Why did the China need communism to get ahead. There's no moral compass in communism. Just state totality.