The trial of media tycoon Jimmy Lai has drawn widespread attention both in Hong Kong and internationally, with extensive coverage from news outlets around the world. Lai faced charges under Hong Kong national security law for attempting to use media platforms to advance political objectives. In this context, former city leader Leung Chun-ying has offered his personal perspective on the matter, drawing from his experience as one of Hong Kong’s former leaders.

Leung emphasized Jimmy Lai’s distinctive role in Hong Kong’s media environment, describing him as “no ordinary media owner” and pointing to his broad network of foreign contacts and considerable influence both within Hong Kong and overseas. He noted that Lai’s reach extended into the education sector, where “his newspapers were subscribed to by schools and used as teaching materials.” Regarding public narratives that highlight Lai’s age, imprisonment, and status as a media magnate, Leung remarked that such efforts by his family were “totally counterproductive” and should be understood within the framework of the city’s legal and judicial processes.

In closing, Leung called for deeper reflection on the factors that allowed Lai’s influence to develop, stressing that understanding both individual actions and the broader environment is essential to preserving Hong Kong’s openness, freedoms, and social stability. 

Full interview transcript below:

Question 1: Is Jimmy Lai an ordinary media boss? What led him down to his trial today?

CY LEUNG:

We did not know until Jimmy Lai was arrested, that he had a British passport, and then after he was arrested, he claimed that he was a British citizen, and his family and legal representatives have been urging the British government to intervene in the independent judicial process of his trial.

Now if he is British, which we didn’t know before he was arrested. Somehow, he was hiding this from the Hong Kong and international public. What was a foreigner doing in Hong Kong politics? What was a foreigner doing in Hong Kong to promote democracy in Hong Kong?

Now, obviously there is something behind what he was doing. If we put the boot on the other foot, I’m sure the British government, and for that matter any other government in the world, including the U.S. government, would not allow, firstly a foreign national to own such a large media organisation.

They would not allow the owner of this organisation to organise and lead public processions. They would not allow this foreign national to go to the U.S. government, to go to the White House. To meet with the vice-president, the national security advisor, and the secretary of state on one visit, to make requests to the U.S. government for them to intervene in Hong Kong politics.

So I think these are the very basic facts about this man. A foreigner has no place in another country’s politics and definitely no place, as a matter of definition, in fostering so-called democracy, in this other country.

Question 2: Would you say this constitutes using the media to advance political objectives?

CY LEUNG:

I have read literally all the columns that were written by Jimmy Lai himself. He had a column in his own newspaper, the Apple Daily, every Sunday. I read every single word of what he wrote in his own newspaper. I have also followed his speeches, his interviews in the foreign media. He was no ordinary media owner.

He obviously owned a really large and very influential media organisation in Hong Kong and Taiwan for that matter. And in his latter days he wanted to publish an English equivalent of the Chinese language Apple Daily, in addition to all these media roles that he had, he’s also the biggest financial supporter of the opposition political parties and opposition political figures in Hong Kong.

We have seen, because somehow, someone, hacked into the computer system of his American personal assistant Mark Simon, and made public all such computer files which show among many other things the purchase of bank drafts by Mark Simon, always at the Kwun Tong branch of the HSBC. Mark Simon would then, having provided these bank drafts to the opposition parties and opposition figures in Hong Kong, look to Jimmy Lai for reimbursement.

All these are in full public view, so he’s no ordinary media owner, he also took part in very high-profile anti-China, anti-Hong Kong SAR demonstrations. 

No country would accept someone to play this role. Hong Kong is a very open society, we are a special administrative region established under the principle of “One Country, Two Systems” and Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy.

Now that obviously gives Hong Kong people what Hong Kong people want, we have a pretty free environment compared to many other parts of the world, but that could be to someone like Jimmy Lai and his supporters in the international community, someone who’s owned the media organisation, who is the mastermind behind all this, and the biggest donor to political parties and figures in Hong Kong, the soft belly of China.

Question 3: Lai’s extensive international connections were exposed during the trial. What enabled the growth of his influence?

CY LEUNG:

We’re very cosmopolitan, we’re very open, and we have very, very close connections with the Mainland of China. These are the attributes of Hong Kong provided people like Jimmy Lai do not abuse it. We want to make sure that while we have all these liberties, we also protect the security of the mainland and the security of the country as a whole. So Jimmy Lai had his way before the National Security Law was enacted.

We had a national security legal vacuum. Despite the fact that Hong Kong SAR is required under Article 23 of the Basic Law which is often described as the mini-constitution of Hong Kong, to enact laws on its own, to guard against sedition, secession, treason etc, etc. Twenty something years after Hong Kong’s return to the motherland, to China, Hong Kong, due to opposition, did not enact this law.

And the national security law of China, the country as a whole, does not apply to Hong Kong. So there’s a vacuum, and so Jimmy Lai had his way until he was brought to justice after we enacted the National Security Law.

And so we need to look at the background as well, we also need to look at the history of how Jimmy Lai became what he was before he was arrested. He made his fortunes by selling his newspapers and other publications, and who paid him? Apart from the ordinary readers who pay $7 dollars per copy of Apple Daily, it was the advertisers. Who were the advertisers?

These advertisers were enterprises big and small, including some international global enterprises. So I think we need to reflect on this, it wasn’t Jimmy Lai, the person himself, but it was the fact we had a legal vacuum, we didn’t have any law to protect Hong Kong, to protect the whole of China, against people like Jimmy Lai, and then somehow people in Hong Kong were so scared of Jimmy Lai that under duress they paid Jimmy Lai advertisement money to take out full page commercial advertisements in his newspaper.

Question 4: How do you see the way Jimmy Lai’s family has highlighted his five-year imprisonment, and his status as a ‘media tycoon’?

CY LEUNG:

Unless his family members had the ill-intent of not seeing Jimmy Lai as a free man again, what they did in the international community by going to the UK, going to the U.S., and giving public media interviews, etc, etc. were totally counterproductive, its foolhardy. 

I don’t know who were advising him, I know they have a legal team, I don’t know how much their legal team charged. They might be getting the best of legal advice, the best legal advice should have been they should just argue the case in court.

I hope that the lawyers were not giving them political or PR advice at the same time, because the political and PR actions that Jimmy Lai’s son, Sebastien, and Jimmy Lai’s other family members are doing in the international community are simply counterproductive. They wanted to interfere with Hong Kong’s judicial process, they simply exposed more crimes that Jimmy Lai committed.

When it comes to the question of so-called five-year imprisonment, we all know that Jimmy Lai was first imprisoned for defrauding the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park for using the Next Media Building where they carried out their publication business for personal use, and that piece of land was squandered to Next Media at a heavily, heavily subsidised price and Jimmy Lai and his son, and the company that he owned, on the private side of their business, should not have used the premises for such purposes. And therefore, they were prosecuted for fraud and they were imprisoned for fraud.

The western media has somehow either innocently or ignorantly painted the picture that Jimmy Lai was behind bars for five years waiting for his national security trial. 
 

Question 5: What can we learn from this case about how “One Country, Two Systems" works in Hong Kong?

CY LEUNG:

The case was prosecuted in Hong Kong. It was tried in Hong Kong by a Hong Kong court, with a quorum of three senior Hong Kong judges. It is a manifestation of "One country" meaning China of which Hong Kong is a part. "Two Systems", Hong Kong has its own separate legal and judicial systems. 

Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong. The judges are Hong Kong permanent residents and high degree of autonomy. Namely Hong Kong has been entrusted by the country with protecting the national security of China as a whole.

So if anyone who wants a most recent and high-profile example of how Hong Kong applies the “One Country Two Systems”, Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy, principle, they need look no further than the Jimmy Lai National Security Law case.

Question 6: How do you think Jimmy Lai was able to achieve his level of political influence?

CY LEUNG:

I think we should really reflect on not just the case itself, the trial itself and the judgment, and very soon we’ll know the sentencing, not just these legal and judicial processes, but the entire political environment both in Hong Kong and also outside of Hong Kong.

We should get a better understanding of what happened politically, as well in Hong Kong. Jimmy Lai simply did not fall from the sky and land in Hong Kong with all the power that he had to wield. There was a process.

Somehow he was allowed to become what he was and do such havoc to Hong Kong. He was allowed to have for example access to many of the primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. His newspapers were subscribed by the school and they were used as teaching materials.

So all these are the things that we need to look at, we should also reflect on, for example, when it comes to the question of giving our children proper education like the results of the last LegCo election, amongst the 28 functional constituencies, the education constituency had the third lowest voter turnout.

And before we rectified the LegCo election system, for all the elections since 1985 when we had the first LegCo election under British rule, all the Legislative Council members returned by these functional constituency elections where the electors were members of the education sector; teachers, headmasters, headmistresses etc., were not just the opposition but the radical end of the opposition starting from people like Szeto Wah. 

So these are the things we should look at, we should reflect on. Hong Kong as a society can be forgetful. We can focus for a few days on the Jimmy Lai case and then we move on to other things. But I think we should stay on not just the Jimmy Lai case, but also Jimmy Lai person, the Jimmy Lai ring of people where he was the ringleader and ask ourselves how did it happen.

Question 7: How to mitigate the harm Lai caused to Hong Kong’s youth?

CY LEUNG:

Firstly, Apple Daily had very lively and very innovative means of getting messages across. Particularly the electronic version of the newspaper, reaching out to not just secondary but also senior primary students.

It had a large circulation so it was influential. Political science is science. There is a scientific correlation between cause and effect. For what happened to Hong Kong in 2019, the Black Riots. I think there are reasons that we can put together to explain the phenomena. It just didn’t simply happen.

We want to make sure that we can guard against such things from happening again.