President Trump is heading to China this week, and one person watching closely is Claire Lai, the daughter of Jimmy Lai. Her father is a Hong Kong businessman, media mogul and faithful Catholic who has been imprisoned and sentenced to 20 years by the Communist regime for being an outspoken critic of the Chinese government.
More than 100 U.S. lawmakers have sent President Trump a letter urging him to address Lai’s case with Chinese President Xi Jinping when he meets with China’s leader. Claire, on the other hand, has a few words for Xi herself.
“If my father dies behind bars, he will die a martyr. And that is not something that China wants.”
That her father may die in prison is a possibility Claire has come to terms with. Her father, the 78-year-old billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a faithful Catholic and political prisoner, was sentenced by a Beijing-backed Hong Kong court in February, consigned to spend what will be the rest of his natural life behind bars.
He was found guilty in December of sedition and conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign forces. His sentence is the longest handed down under China’s new national security law. It’s a statute many experts believe was created for the sole purpose of silencing Lai, one of the communist country’s most ardent critics.
Claire was not able to attend the sentencing. “I was heartbroken,” she says. “It was the first time that he had been sentenced where I wasn’t in Hong Kong with him. … It was a hard pill to swallow.” But she was strengthened by the letter she received from him, in which “he expressed that he was in our Lord’s good hands and regardless of the outcome, that doesn’t change.”
The court’s ruling ignited an outpouring of negative reactions from across the globe from those deeply concerned with religious freedom and freedom of speech. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the sentencing “an unjust and tragic conclusion to this case.”
The United Kingdom’s government also condemned the sentence of its British citizen, calling it “a death sentence” for the frail Lai, who suffers from diabetes and a host of other medical conditions as he’s kept in solitary confinement.
Canada’s foreign affairs minister called the sentencing a “politically motivated prosecution” and demanded Lai’s release on humanitarian grounds.
But it is Lai’s faith in Jesus Christ, in a God whose power is made perfect in weakness, that keeps his frail body going, says Claire, 29, an attorney and now her father’s outspoken advocate, pleading for his release. One of those she is pleading with is President Donald Trump.
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This week, Trump will head to China and meet with Xi. Claire, who was invited by House Speaker Mike Johnson to the State of the Union address in February, is hoping the president will raise her father’s plight with Xi. Says Claire, “We’re so extremely grateful to President Trump and his administration. … We do hope that a solution will be a bit closer to a diplomatic solution.”
In a subtle yet decisive warning, Claire Lai, speaking on my “Lighthouse Faith” podcast, said, “It is absolutely in China’s interest to release my father. I mean, they are at risk of having a martyr behind bars.”
What she means is that, by keeping her father in prison until he dies, China may accomplish the exact opposite of what it intends. Instead of silencing critics, Beijing may embolden them through Lai’s example of faith in the midst of dire persecution.
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Christianity has grown exponentially for centuries, founded on the blood of the martyrs. For 2,000 years, those who follow Jesus, the suffering servant who died unjustly at the hands of Roman rulers, have learned to obey God rather than earthly leaders. Their eyes are fixed on eternity and a God who is Lord over history.
Leaders throughout the centuries who thought, like China, that they could stop Christianity’s spread by killing its followers have learned the hard way that, as Jesus told the apostle Peter, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against my church.”
Jimmy Lai’s story is one of amazing success. He escaped China on a fishing boat and arrived in Hong Kong, still under British rule, at the age of 12. He worked his way up to becoming a media mogul and billionaire businessman. When Claire was born, he converted to Catholicism and never wavered in his faith.
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Says Claire, “At the time of him converting, it was a time when, during the handover, many people in Hong Kong had hearts filled with fear and doubt. I think he learned then that the only thing that could conquer it was God’s love.”
For more than 150 years, Hong Kong was a British colony. It became a prosperous, cosmopolitan and democratic dynamo, with 7.5 million people living in a little less than 700 square miles. But in 1997, the handover gave Hong Kong back to China. At the time, its leaders vowed that things in the former colony wouldn’t change. But they lied.
Things did change. Hong Kong became a special administrative region of China. Freedom of speech, religious expression and democracy were all whittled away. But Jimmy Lai kept speaking out against the communist regime, using his media empire, his Apple Daily newspaper and other outlets to do so. Then, in 2020, the government countered with the national security law, a vague, undefined law used to crack down on anyone deemed to be a dissident and to arrest, charge and convict people like Jimmy Lai and others with similar views.
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Just a few months ago, in March, it was reported that the owner and three employees of one of Hong Kong’s last independent bookshops were arrested. Books were seized, including all copies of Jimmy Lai’s biography. The bookstore closed. They were arrested, reportedly, for “knowingly selling seditious publications.”
Ultimately, Jimmy Lai’s fate is in the hands of God, despite the political maneuvers of secular regimes and power brokers. That is why Jimmy Lai prays. He prays for the prison guards, for people who are sick, for those who are imprisoned, for those who are not in prison and for those who are praying for him. And despite his weakened condition, he fasts.
Says Claire, “He fasts every Friday, and fasting is not easy on a man like him. He shivers when he does, and the guards put the food in front of him and … he just sits. So, he just sits with his hunger, and he looks at the crucifix that he draws, and he tells himself that his shivering and his suffering is nothing compared to what our Savior suffered for us sinners.”
China, take note. What power do you really have over a man like that?