When lawyers representing Jimmy Lai, the British businessman who founded the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily – and who now sits in a Hong Kong prison cell as a result – met earlier this month with The Globe’s editorial board, the words “ludicrous” and “absurd” came up several times.
The lawyers provided updates on the widespread international calls for Mr. Lai’s release – by the United States and British governments, but shamefully not by Canada’s – and on his unfolding trial. Opening arguments began in December and offered a revealing window into the prosecution’s case, said Caoilfhionn Gallagher and Jonathan Price, two human-rights lawyers practising with the British firm Doughty Street Chambers. “In essence, this is a trial about conspiracy to commit journalism,” Ms. Gallagher said.
One claim from the prosecution is that Mr. Lai requested that a staff member ask Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong before the handover to China in 1997, to write an op-ed. A newspaper publisher asking an international news figure to write a column is so mundane that it feels like you’re missing the point, Ms. Gallagher said.
“So many of the allegations are really quite ludicrous,” she concluded.
China’s Unapologetic Stance
Other odd bits presented as damning accusations are drawn out by courtroom stagecraft. Mr. Lai has been alleged to have – favored democracy and the rule of law. Mr. Price said this tone is familiar from China’s other representations to the world.
In March 2023, after The Globe had reported on China’s attempts to interfere in Canadian elections, the Chinese embassy in Ottawa accused Canadian politicians and the media of “hyping up” what it dismissed as “pure slander and total nonsense.”
China’s Unwavering Confidence
The tone is always the same: scolding and haughty, supremely confident despite obvious dishonesty or manipulation, in the apparent belief that saying something makes it true. Guy Saint-Jacques, Canada’s ambassador to China from 2012 to 2016, says the intended audience for these statements is a domestic Chinese one, not the citizens or government of the country in which diplomats are working.
China’s Influence on the International Community
Every time we’re asked, ‘Does China care what the international community thinks?’, well, the answer is yes, said Ms. Gallagher. That leads to two conclusions. Canada can influence China – but any such influence will be through asserting its own interests, plainly and directly, rather than the soft-pedalling of recent years. Canada must discard any remaining naiveté it has about China, and act like it.
Insightful Conclusions
New ways of thinking about China are indeed needed – although not in the way that Mr. Barton perhaps intends. The take-aways from Jimmy Lai’s trial are thought-provoking, and it’s a reminder that the international community should confront China’s manipulative tactics in a direct and unapologetic manner if it hopes to assert its own interests on the global stage.
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