Jimmy Lai will not appeal his 20-year Hong Kong conviction

Jimmy Lai, the jailed founder of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, has decided not to appeal his 20-year sentence under the city’s national security law, leaving diplomacy as the primary avenue for his release.

Catch up: Lai, 78, built Apple Daily into one of Hong Kong’s most widely read pro-democracy newspapers until authorities forced it to close. He has been imprisoned since 2020. A court convicted him last December on two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of conspiracy to publish seditious materials. Prosecutors cited his meetings with then-Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a New York Times op-ed calling for U.S. sanctions against Chinese officials and WhatsApp messages with Apple Daily executives and activists. Last month’s sentencing of 20 years was the longest imposed under the national security law.

Latest developments: Lai’s domestic legal team said Friday, “We can confirm we have clear and definitive instructions not to lodge an appeal against conviction or sentence,” without offering an explanation. This could now set the stage for political negotiations, though past cases in which Western governments secured the release of citizens detained by China had hinged on deteriorating bilateral relations.

Earlier, Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal had overturned a separate fraud conviction against Lai, though his daughter Claire dismissed it as “nothing more than a PR move by the Hong Kong authorities.” Meanwhile, Fung Wai-kong, the former editor-in-chief of Apple Daily’s English news section, filed his own appeal against a 10-year sentence in the same national security case.

What this means: For the Hong Kong diaspora and Asian American advocates, the decision suggests that the fight has shifted from courtrooms to capitals. Lai’s case represents a broader dismantling of Hong Kong’s opposition, one that also saw the Democratic Party disband in December by a vote of 57 to 2 under pressure from the national security law. With legal options exhausted, attention now turns to whether President Donald Trump will press Xi Jinping firmly enough during his Beijing visit to secure Lai’s freedom.

Trump is expected to visit Beijing between March 31 and April 2, a trip on which he has previously said he would raise Lai’s case with Xi Jinping.