From foreign ties to youth influence, CY Leung shares additional perspectives on the Jimmy Lai case and Hong Kong’s legal system.

Question 1: 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 2: What lessons can be learned from this case to safeguard against damages caused by people like Jimmy Lai?

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 3: 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.