David Cottam says Western critics need to appreciate Jimmy Lai’s role in the SAR’s disorder, the catalyst for the laws under which he was charged

The trial of Hong Kong’s former media mogul, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, finally ended this week. He has been found guilty of conspiring to collude with external forces to endanger national security and conspiring with others to publish seditious materials. Unsurprisingly, in the West, this long-anticipated judgment has been met with a barrage of condemnation.

Western reports have portrayed the case as nothing more than a “show trial”. The independence and integrity of Hong Kong’s legal system have been denigrated, portraying the judiciary as merely following Beijing’s instructions. This narrative maintains that a fair trial for Lai was impossible, that the rule of law has been removed, and that the guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion.

These Western attacks on Hong Kong’s Judiciary have already been thoroughly demolished in a number of articles published in China Daily. There is absolutely no doubt that Lai received a fair trial and was found guilty on purely legal rather than political grounds.

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What I want to focus on is the issue at the heart of the West’s criticism of the trial: Its condemnation of the Hong Kong SAR National Security Law (NSL) under which Lai was prosecuted. This condemnation misses the fundamental point that no one can pick and choose which laws they want to abide by and which ones they can willfully ignore. Upholding the rule of law anywhere in the world means upholding all the laws, irrespective of one’s personal views of their merits or shortcomings. No one is above the law, and no one is entitled to break any individual law on the grounds that they simply don’t like it. I may not like the 50-kilometer speed limit on stretches of road in Hong Kong, but if I’m caught in breach of it, I have to face the legal consequences. Lai clearly didn’t like the NSL, and when he breached it, he also had to face the legal consequences. It is the utmost hypocrisy for Western commentators to portray themselves as defenders of the rule of law and simultaneously condemn Hong Kong for upholding its laws.

Both the United States and the United Kingdom have called for the verdict to be immediately overturned. Ignoring the mountain of evidence presented at the trial, UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the British Parliament that Lai had been “targeted by the Chinese and Hong Kong governments for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression”. Seemingly oblivious to the meaning of the rule of law, she called for Lai’s “immediate release”, presumably believing that Hong Kong’s NSL shouldn’t apply to him because he’s an “advocate for democracy”. Indeed, the predominant line being peddled in the West is that Lai is being punished for supporting democracy. This is a classic example of the old adage “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

The reality is that Lai wasn’t tried for “supporting democracy”. He was found guilty of collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security (under the NSL) and conspiring with others to publish seditious materials (ironically, under the Crimes Ordinance, a law introduced under British rule). These charges would be regarded as serious in any country around the world and certainly in the US and UK. Imagine the reaction if one of Britain’s most influential media moguls had been colluding with foreign powers, urging them to impose sanctions on the country, as well as conspiring to incite rebellion (sedition) through his tabloid newspaper. The only question would be whether he would be tried under Britain’s National Security Act or the old treason laws.

Yet these are the charges of which Lai has been found guilty. Western critics seem oblivious to this sort of hypocrisy and also to the context in which Hong Kong’s vilified NSL came into being. There are two significant aspects to this context. First, the NSL was enacted not as a response to peaceful pro-democracy protests, but following months of rioting, violence, arson and attacks on public and private property, including an invasion of the Legislative Council building. All this is conveniently swept under the carpet by Western commentators, despite the fact that such actions would never be tolerated in their own countries.

The other context for the NSL, which is also ignored in the West, is that protesters were not just demanding greater democracy but also Hong Kong’s independence from China, in breach of the Basic Law and the “one country, two systems” constitutional arrangement that had been agreed upon between China and Britain for the 1997 handover of Hong Kong. This crossed a clear red line for China, as secession of any part of its territory is regarded as unacceptable. All countries have their red lines, and China holds territorial integrity sacrosanct. This stems directly from both China’s history and geography.

The history of China from the First Opium War of 1839-42 to the defeat of the Japanese invasion force in 1945 is often referred to as China’s century of humiliation. This is for good reason. During this period, it was subject to a series of enforced “unequal treaties” and invasions that carved up China into British, French, Russian, German and Japanese “spheres of influence”. With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, there was a determination for such quasi-colonial domination never to happen again.

Territorial integrity and national sovereignty have been fundamental principles for China ever since. This mindset, molded by China’s history, is reinforced by its geopolitical setting. It is a massive country of 1.4 billion people covering a huge part of Asia, bordered by 14 sovereign states, and incorporating diverse ethnic minorities. As with all great empires or countries in history, the priority always has to be national security and the protection of borders in order to maintain unity and stability. If any part of the country is allowed to rebel or secede, cracks appear, the whole structure is threatened, and anarchy beckons.

All countries have different histories, different geographical settings, different characteristics, and therefore their own different red lines. Overseas commentators need to understand this and refrain from judging and condemning other countries’ red lines simply because they don’t match their own set of priorities, values or prejudices. This is a form of cultural imperialism that is doomed to fail.

ALSO READ: What Western legal history tells us about Jimmy Lai’s case

The wise course of action for the West in Lai’s verdict is to say and do nothing. It needs to accept that Hong Kong’s independent Judiciary has given him a fair trial; that the charges against him would have been equally serious if they had been leveled in any Western country; that the trial needs to be viewed in the context of violent, pro-independence protests; and that China’s red line on national security is an understandable product of its history and geopolitical situation. This last point is particularly ironic, given that Western colonial powers played such a major role in making national security and territorial integrity so sacrosanct for China.

Perhaps the greatest irony, however, is the fact that Lai is one of the people culpable for the enactment of the NSL under which he was charged. He encouraged naive young protesters in a cause they could never win, helping to fuel months of violence, and leading inevitably to a strong reaction in the form of new national security legislation. His subsequent breach of this legislation led directly to his trial.

He has now discovered that no one is exempt from the rule of law. Western critics need to practice what they preach about the rule of law being inviolable, including those laws they don’t like. They also need to appreciate Lai’s role in Hong Kong’s violent disorder, which was the catalyst for the security laws under which he was charged. He needs to be seen as a perpetrator rather than a victim, and as someone who has now received poetic justice for breaking a law that his own behavior helped to trigger.

The author is a British historian and former principal of Sha Tin College, an international secondary school in Hong Kong.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.