The Hong Konger: A businessman’s self-sacrifice in the name of freedom

“If you’re a bird, you’d rather die singing than living a silent life.” 

Those are the words of Hong Kong pro-democracy leader and businessman Jimmy Lai in The Hong Konger: Jimmy Lai’s Extraordinary Struggle for Freedom, a documentary produced by the Acton Institute and available free on YouTube.

Lai went from a stowaway refugee from communist China to a billionaire entrepreneur in British-ruled Hong Kong. After the Chinese government repression in response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, he grew concerned about how China would treat Hong Kong after the British handover slated for 1997. He turned his energies to supporting the democracy movement in China and entered the world of print media, publishing journals often critical of China policy. In 1995, he founded Apple Daily and became one of the most vocal leaders in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

For his efforts, he was arrested in 2020, convicted, and sentenced to five years in prison. Presently he is undergoing another trial on further national security charges. The Hong Konger effectively chronicles Jimmy’s story of heroic sacrifice in the fight for human freedom.

As Lai had feared, Hong Kong’s descent from a free British colony to repression under Chinese rule was relatively swift despite the international handover agreement. 

The 1997 agreement pledged that Hong Kong would exist as a special administrative region governed by a principle of “one country, two systems.” The former colony would retain its freedoms and remaining largely self-governing for 50 years. But efforts to restrict those freedoms — and massive pro-democracy protests in response — followed quickly. 

Then in 2020, Beijing imposed a national security law that targeted its political opposition — including Lai. After a 2021 raid, Apple Daily was shuttered. Despite local protests and international appeals, Lai remains imprisoned. 

Will Lai be freed someday? Will Hong Kong have its freedoms restored in keeping with the handover agreement? As Lai says in The Hong Konger, “We lose our freedom, we lose everything.”