When President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington on September 23, he will be greeted with the full ceremonial trappings of a superpower summit. But for advocates of press freedom, the visit raises a pointed question: Will President Donald Trump use the occasion to press for the release of Jimmy Lai, the 78-year-old Hong Kong newspaper publisher and democracy campaigner who has been jailed since 2020?
Lai’s case has become a cause célèbre among those tracking the erosion of Hong Kong’s civil liberties. As the founder of Apple Daily, a feisty tabloid known for its biting criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Lai embodied the kind of independent journalism that Beijing has long sought to extinguish. His imprisonment, much of it in solitary confinement, is widely seen as a warning to others: challenge the party’s authority and face the consequences.
Trump has previously promised to secure Lai’s freedom. In 2020, Lai told CNN that Trump was “the only one who can save us” from China’s tightening grip. Trump responded by vowing to get him out “100 percent,” calling it an easy task. Now, with Xi in town, that promise faces its first real test. The White House has not publicly commented on whether Lai’s release will be on the agenda, but the symbolism of the moment is hard to ignore.
For Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO of Index on Censorship, the issue is deeply personal. In a recent essay, she described years of imagining Lai’s release: his reunion with his children, including a son who has cancer, and his wife, Teresa. “I think about meeting him myself,” she wrote. “We’d drink hot chocolate” – a nod to Lai’s dramatic escape from Mao’s China as a boy, when a traveler gave him a chocolate bar.
Steinfeld argues that Lai’s incarceration is not just an injustice against one man but a measure of Hong Kong’s transformation. “Strip away the legal scaffolding surrounding his prosecution and the reality is simple: Jimmy Lai is in prison because Beijing couldn’t tolerate the independent journalism he championed,” she wrote. The closure of Apple Daily and the arrest of its staff sent a chilling message to newsrooms across the territory: self-censor or face the same fate.
Beijing’s tactics fit a familiar authoritarian playbook: use national security laws, arrests, and prosecutions to intimidate journalists and force self-censorship. Hong Kong, once one of Asia’s freest media environments, has been dismantled with startling speed. As Steinfeld notes, modern censorship rarely involves a bureaucrat striking out offending words; it relies on the threat of prison to make people silence themselves.
Yet amid the geopolitical stakes, Lai’s family insists his desires are modest. His daughter, Claire, has said he no longer wishes to be an activist; he simply wants to spend his remaining years in peace with his family and his faith. He suffers from diabetes, and his health is reportedly deteriorating. His continued detention, critics say, serves no purpose other than to remind the world of Beijing’s intolerance of dissent.
Trump has shown that political prisoners can be freed when their release becomes a diplomatic priority. His administration helped secure the release of opposition figures in Belarus, including Sergei Tikhanovsky. Now, as Xi visits Washington, Trump has a chance to add Lai’s name to that list. The question is whether he will seize it – or let the moment pass.
For those who have followed Lai’s ordeal, the answer matters not just for one man, but for the future of press freedom in Hong Kong and beyond. As Steinfeld put it, “Releasing Lai costs Beijing little. Keeping him imprisoned ensures he remains an international symbol of China’s fear of dissent.” With hot chocolate waiting, the world watches to see if Trump will keep his word.
