Chinese President Xi Jinping has suggested Hong Kong’s pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai is unlikely to be released, US President Donald Trump said on Friday.
Asked about the fate of political prisoners in China after a high-level summit in Beijing, Trump said Xi would “strongly” consider releasing an underground church pastor, but that releasing Lai was “a difficult thing for him.”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said of Lai’s fate: “I raised him, it’s harder for him, it’s tougher.”
Trump added: “He told me that Jimmy Lai is a difficult thing for him.”
Lai, the 78-year-old founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, was pleaded guilty in December with the charge of foreign collaboration and publication for sedition and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The sentence was the harshest yet handed down under a national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing after widespread pro-democracy protests in 2019 and drew international condemnation.
Trump added on Friday that Xi promised “He will strongly consider the pastor,” referring to Jin Mingri, the founder of a popular Chinese underground church arrested in October in a sweeping nationwide crackdown.
Jin founded the unregistered Zion Church in 2007 in Beijing. It grew to 1500 members ago closing in 2018 under pressure from the Chinese authorities.
But the church maintained an online presence that flourished during the Covid pandemic, amassing followers in 40 Chinese cities.
Jin was arrested on October 10 for “suspicion of illegal use of information networks”.
Eric Lai, senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said that while it was clear that Jimmy Lai’s case was not a priority at the summit, it was still significant that Trump brought it up.
“Obviously, the CCP does not compromise on its perception of regime security, and they have never changed their attitudes and position on Jimmy Lai and his imprisonment,” he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.
“That said, it is also clear that international attention and domestic pressure in American society remain essential for the US government to pursue an agenda for Jimmy Lai along with other political prisoners in China,” he added.
