Congress Hears Pleas for Release of God-Fearing Chinese Democracy Advocate

A top congressional panel on Wednesday examined the imprisonment of Chinese media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai and the state of press freedom and judicial independence in China.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing, titled “A Son and Daughter’s Appeal to Xi Jinping to Release Their Dad, Jimmy Lai,” comes a week before the Chinese Communist Party leader’s visit to the United States.

The hearing featured testimony from Sebastien Lai, the son of the imprisoned media entrepreneur, who called for the immediate release of the 78-year-old democracy activist. Jimmy Lai was sentenced to prison after founding a non-state-sponsored newspaper and “believing in the almighty,” the panel’s chairman, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said during the hearing.

“America understands, in his pains, that freedom dies with the last men willing to defend it. And that the cost of not standing up for liberty is not felt until it is too late,” Sebastien Lai said.

“My father poses no threat. His imprisonment makes him a symbol of injustice. His death in prison would be a disgrace.”

Lai also said during his testimony that his sister, Claire Lai, was supposed to testify before the panel alongside him Wednesday but was diagnosed with cancer earlier this month and is currently undergoing chemotherapy in London.

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The congressional panel also heard from Steve Yates, senior research fellow for China and national security at The Heritage Foundation, who provided the committee with insight into the Chinese Communist Party’s control.

“This is no longer principally an appeal to law, foreign or domestic,” Yates said. “It is a litmus test of whether there remains any reason to believe there is a future in Xi Jinping’s China for the kind of man that Jimmy Lai is.”

During his testimony, Yates, who lost his 25-year-old daughter in 2023 to a fentanyl overdose, added that the cancer diagnosis of Jimmy Lai’s daughter only furthers the case for why he must be released.

“As a father who held his daughter’s hand through the truly terrible circumstances and ultimately lost her, I can attest there has been no greater pain in my life,” Yates said. “Not being permitted to hold her hand through those times would have been unimaginably worse.”

“China should not be making a dying man and a daughter, confronting grave illness, endure additional cruelty in the service of a political trophy,” Yates continued.

After the witnesses’ remarks, Smith thanked them for coming forward and asserted that not many things can unite Congress, but Lai’s imprisonment does.

“We should also remember the human dimension of this case. For more than five years, Jimmy Lai’s children have had to live with the reality that their father is imprisoned thousands of miles away,” Smith said.

“For a man of Jimmy Lai’s age, and given the serious concerns about his health, a 20-year sentence carries an obvious and deeply troubling humanitarian consequence,” Smith added. “Sebastien has described it as a death sentence. That is why time matters.”