Why is a jailed Trump fanatic tycoon tabloid publisher making waves? The simple answer is that he isn’t. Most of the world (Asians and Africans are 76% of humanity) have no interest in Jimmy Lai.
But in the “Western supremacist” countries linked by the “Five Eyes” intelligence network, the Hong Kong anti-China campaigner is another thread in a carefully cultivated strategic network of anti-China narratives.
Aidan Jonah looks at groups in Canada who are playing along.
JIMMY LAI, KNOWN FOR Apple Daily’s publishing of a 2012 advertisement calling mainland Chinese “locusts”, is close to the end of a lengthy trial more than a decade later, facing charges of sedition and collusion with foreign forces against Hong Kong and mainland China.
In 2022, Lai even called for the US to use nuclear weapons on the PRC.
Who publicly leads the charge to free him? Unsurprisingly, US and UK-allied activists from Hong Kong’s anti-government movement, who have been complaining lately that their budgets have been cut.
Who has been paying them to vociferously demand his freedom? The US government and US organizations, along with ex-politicians, no surprise there. But then the Canadians pop up.
CANADA STEPS UP
As Jimmy Lai has faded from the Western public’s memory, it has recently been Canadian politicians connected to the NED-funded Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China and other elites, who are prostrating themselves in a desperate bid to save Lai from the consequences of his actions.
What actions did Jimmy Lai take against the HKSAR?
Even before the years-long trial of Jimmy Lai, numerous revelations about his actions have come up.
In 2019, the Grayzone reported:
“Leaked emails revealed that Lai poured more than US$1.2 million to anti-China political parties including US$637,000 to the Democratic Party and US$382,000 to the Civic Party. Lai also gave US$115,000 to the Hong Kong Civic Education Foundation and Hong Kong Democratic Development Network, both of which were co-founded by Reverend Chu Yiu-ming. Lai also spent US$446,000 on Occupy Central’s 2014 unofficial referendum.”
Lai also traveled to the Taiwan area in 2013, to have a secret conversation with Shih Ming-the, who “reportedly instructed Lai on non-violent tactics to bring the government to heel, emphasizing the importance of a commitment to go to jail. He also had harboured ambitions to publish Apple Daily from the Taiwan area.
Lai has high connections with the US Republicans, through his assistant Mark Simon (former head of Republicans Abroad in Hong Kong), resulting in the Trump administration inviting:
“Jimmy Lai to join a meeting to decide what to do about Hong Kong in July of 2019, the court heard. This was a high level meeting, in which Lai met with US Vice-President Mike Pence, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the China-hating former director of the CIA. Also present was John Bolton, the ultra-hawkish Secretary for Security.”
In 2020, Lai said “only Trump can save Hong Kong.”
LAI’S WORKERS SPILL THE BEANS
In 2021, two Chinese citizens in the HKSAR, Andy Li Yu-hin and Chan Tsz-wah, admitted to “conspiring to collude with foreign forces, Lai and his aide Mark Simon to endanger national security”.
The two individuals said that “they had, between July 2020 and February 2021, colluded with Lai, Simon and others to organize international promotions to encourage foreign governments to sanction Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Chinese mainland officials.”
Last year, in an HKSAR court “Lai admitted to giving £20,000 ($25,320) to Hong Kong Watch, an anti-China hate machine that has repeatedly urged foreign companies to impose sanctions against China and the HKSAR.”
Prosecutors have said Lai and Simon “paid at least HK$13.7 million to finance a plot to trigger blockades, sanctions and related hostile actions against the city”.
THESE ARE THE CANADIANS
Who are the Canadian politicians and organizations standing for Jimmy Lai?
Members of the NED-funded Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China in Canada have led the way in ‘solidarity’ with Jimmy Lai. Co-Chair of IPAC’s Canada segment, Irwin Cotler – whose Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights has taken funding for a project promoting Tibet separatism – and Brandon Silver, both of the aforementioned center, make up the Lai ‘expert team’ in Canada.
Just as Canada’s ‘UygHur genocide’ motion in February 2021 was used as a springboard for campaigning against China by Western governments, Canada’s Jimmy Lai motion in December 2023 was used by the United Kingdom to justify jumping in to declare “Mr Lai a British citizen” and demanded HKSAR authorities to “end their prosecution and release Jimmy Lai”.
The Lai motion in Canada’s parliament ludicrously claimed he was “a peaceful pro-democracy campaigner and publisher”. (In factt, Lai and his supporters opposed government attempts to introduce universal suffrage in Hong Kong, on the basis that the plan included an electoral college element.)
The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) was repeatedly invited to speak at Canadian parliament committees and subcommittees by parliamentarians including IPAC member MP Judy Sgro, in 2024.
Despite the name, it is not a Hong Kong body, but a China demonization operation based in London and Washington.
CFHK would have testified in favour of kicking HKETOs out of Canada and demanded the imposition of Magnitsky sanctions on HKSAR officials, if the study they were going to testify during hadn’t been cancelled when Canada’s parliament was prorogued in January 2025. CFHK continues to push for the shuttering of Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office[s] throughout the West—a move that would gravely harm Hong Kong’s artists, filmmakers, designers and other creative industry workers.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS
And who else, outside of the RCWHR bros, is leading Canada advocacy for Lai? In Canada’s parliament, the CFHK, of course.
CFHK staffer Shannon Van Sant met with four Canadian IPAC members, plus one non-IPAC Senator and three non-IPAC MPs (though one, MP Shuvaloy Majumdar, worked for the CIA-front NED’s International Republican Institute for four years before getting involved high-up in Canada politics until he became an MP in 2023, and is also a Hong Kong Watch patron.)
Back in March, the “Law Society of Ontario (LSO) awarded Jimmy Lai its annual Human Rights Award”, a decision CFHK praised heartily.
CANADIAN CITIZENSHIP, FREE OF CHARGE
Months later, at the end of May, the hardcore pro-Lai paper Globe & Mail (an outlet down to launder a CSIS domestic intelligence campaign in its pages), revealed the existence of a campaign to get Lai honorary citizenship in Canada. Supporting the parliamentary campaign was the aforementioned MP Sgro and MP Majumdar, plus fellow IPAC member Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe (a hardcore ‘Uygur genocide’ narrative pusher who attended the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress back in 2021, after being tightly involved in the lead-up to Canada’s 2021 ‘genocide’ vote.)
The paper had already demanded Lai’s freedom in a September 2024 editorial and followed this up with an editorial board meeting with Sebastian Lai, plus a June 2025 event co-hosted with RWCHR pushing for charges against Lai to be dropped.
Who’s cited in the May 2025 article? Irwin Cotler and Brandon Silver of the RWCHR, who make up Lai’s Canada ‘expert team’, along with MP Judy Sgro of IPAC membership and leadership of provocative 2022 and 2024 delegations to the Taiwan area.
While on June 12, the Globe & Mail reported that the Liberal government told IPAC member MP Judy Sgro to drop her planned unanimous-consent motion calling on the government to grant Lai honorary citizenship. Sgro vowed to carry on with the motion, but no news about it has been heard since.
Yet the fight of the Canadian elites and the rest of West for Jimmy Lai to escape the consequences will carry on, with pesky facts and court admissions no obstacle for them to continue attempting to tarnish the image of Hong Kong.
END OF THE STORY
The next part of the story is easily predictable. Given that Jimmy Lai’s staff have all pleaded guilty to related charges, a huge amount of damning evidence was presented against the publisher, and Lai himself has clashed in court with both prosecuting and defending lawyers, most Hong Kong people know which verdict they think is most likely.
And then? The politicians and media of the “Five Eyes” nations will complain bitterly that this “proves” the Chinese are lawless bad guys (ignoring the fact that it hard to imagine a more British legal system than that of Hong Kong).
But the wider world, 95% of which does NOT consist of Americans, British and Canadians, will get on with real life. Given the dramatic development of East Asia, there are going to be interesting times ahead.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, an independent media group. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.