{"id":415667,"date":"2026-02-09T03:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T03:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/415667\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T03:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T03:43:08","slug":"hong-kong-court-jails-pro-democracy-media-tycoon-jimmy-lai-for-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/415667\/","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong court jails pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai for 20 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Who is Jimmy Lai?published at 01:41 GMT<\/p>\n<p>01:41 GMT<\/p>\n<p>      <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Jimmy Lai in a red jacket standing in a newsroom, holding a newspaper\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0618138c-0cb5-44f6-82dd-1bdcb63c3dc5.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"1022\" height=\"574\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, Getty Images<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hailed by some as a hero and scorned by others as a traitor, the 78-year-old is the most prominent person charged under the national security law which was introduced by China in 2020 in response to massive pro-democracy protests which erupted in Hong Kong the year before.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Born in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, Jimmy Lai was 12-years-old when he arrived in Hong Kong as a stowaway on a fishing boat. He started working menial jobs and eventually founded a multi-million dollar empire that included the clothing brand Giordano.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After 1989, when China crushed pro-democracy protests in Beijing\u2019s Tiananmen Square, Lai began a new journey as a vocal democracy activist.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He launched popular pro-democracy news outlets like Next magazine and Apple Daily newspaper, and became a regular attendee of the city\u2019s pro-democracy demonstrations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Many in Hong Kong saw him as a defender of the city\u2019s freedoms, but Beijing viewed him as threat to Chinese national security.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cgm2z7497yko\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read this story<\/a> for more on Jimmy Lai.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who is Jimmy Lai?published at 01:41 GMT 01:41 GMT Image source, Getty Images Hailed by some as a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-415667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}