Media moguls do not necessarily have the same story; it depends on the choices they make. After making his fortune in the garment industry in Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai created the raucous, sensationalist tabloid Apple Daily two years before the former British colony was handed back to China in 1997. Refusing to accept the silent disappearance of Hong Kong’s democracy, Lai made his newspaper the mouthpiece of that resistance, following the rhythm of each new uprising sparked by Beijing’s tightening grip, which ultimately strangled the paper.

In the end, Lai’s choice led him to prison. At 78 years old, he has languished there since 2020, and his 20-year sentence for “collusion with foreign forces” and “seditious publication,” which was handed down on Monday, February 9, amounts to a death sentence. That is the price he has paid for standing up to the Chinese juggernaut. Beijing has crushed the commitment it made in 1984 to preserve for half a century the “way of life” then prevailing in Hong Kong: freedom.

Former US vice president Mike Pence reacted to Lai’s sentencing by denouncing “a mockery of justice” that flouts “the rule of law” and calling for his release. In 2018, when Pence was invited by the conservative Washington think tank Hudson Institute, he leveled fierce criticism at Beijing – in stark contrast to Donald Trump, who rarely finds fault with authoritarian regimes.

Never would the president of the United States, unlike his former right-hand man, decry “an unparalleled surveillance state (…) growing more expansive and intrusive,” nor would he describe the Chinese regime as “an Orwellian system” aimed at controlling “every facet of human life.” When Pence’s successor, JD Vance, claimed that “free speech (…) is in retreat,” he was not referring to Lai but to European countries. He did not issue any comments in the hours following the Hong Kong verdict; evidently, one cannot be everywhere at once.

The sentencing of the Apple Daily founder came just days after another media owner, Jeff Bezos, made his own choices. The multibillionaire, a quintessential self-made man like Lai, deemed that the best response to the heavy losses posted by the Washington Post – a pillar of American investigative journalism – was to decimate its newsroom, cutting it in half in less than two years.

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