For those who speak of the global perils to democracy, a grim milestone deserves their rapt attention and full-throated condemnation: The Feb. 9 sentencing in a Chinese court of Hong Kong dissident Jimmy Lai.
In the imagination of the Chinese Communist Party, Lai’s sentencing closes the book on a troublesome man: a Catholic, a publisher, a democrat. Lai, 78 and in failing health, was condemned under the elastic logic of the Beijing-imposed National Security Law, and is meant to disappear quietly into history.
We must hope that Lai’s story instead endures as an indictment of China’s regime.
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