The son of jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai is warning Western businesses about investing in Hong Kong as the Asian financial center attempts to re-brand itself and lure foreign firms after strict travel curbs kept the city isolated during the pandemic.
Sebastien Lai, whose 75-year-old father has been imprisoned in Hong Kong and saw his popular pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper shuttered by the government in 2021, told a crowd in Washington on Wednesday that the risks in Hong Kong have soared even as the city’s role in China’s economy has shrunk.
Read more: The Assault on Apple Daily
Lai said he had a piece of advice for any company looking to expand or invest in Hong: “Just Google: Apple Daily raid.” The search will pull up images of hundreds of uniformed Hong Kong police who descended on the paper’s headquarters as the government used a Beijing-imposed national security law to arrest its executives.
“If you want to know what can happen to any business in Hong Kong — at sort of just a command — I think that is a very good picture to look at before you make any decisions on these types of investments,” Lai said at an event on media freedom.
There was no immediate response to a call seeking comment from China’s embassy in Washington.
The words of caution come as Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee embarks on a campaign to revive the city’s global reputation. The efforts, which include giving away 500,000 flights to Hong Kong, follow a bruising few years for the city.
The jailing of Jimmy Lai, whose case has been championed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the Apple Daily closing, which was condemned by President Joe Biden, are merely the most high profile of the political cases stemming from Beijing’s crackdown on the city following sometimes-violent protests in 2019 and China’s imposition of the national security law.
Lai faces the charge of engaging in a conspiracy to collude with foreign forces against China, but has been jailed on unrelated charges.
The Hong Kong government’s efforts to revive the city “are designed to say Hong Kong is open for business, it’s business as usual in Hong Kong, it’s safe to do business in Hong Kong,” said Caoilfhionn Gallagher, one of Jimmy Lai’s lawyers.
“But it is not safe to do business in Hong Kong as long as the national security law exists, as long as people like Jimmy Lai are behind bars simply for doing their jobs,” she said.
(Corrects to spell Lai’s first name asSebastien in a story that ran on May 10)
