Increases pressure on Trump to ask Xi to release Jimmy Lai

The campaign, spread on platforms such as X, Instagram and Reddit under slogans such as ‘#FreeJimmyLai’ or ‘#TrumpXiSummit’, seeks to prevent the fate of the founder of the now closed Beijing critic Apple Daily newspaper from being relegated to commercial, technological and geostrategic disputes that dominate the bilateral agenda.

The initiative was accompanied by heavy figures in Washington, including former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who asked the White House to warn that “time has run out”, and co-chairman of the Executive Committee of Congress on China (ECC), Chris Smith, as well as non-governmental organizations such as Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham also expressly asked Trump, during a recent bilateral meeting, to defend the release of the prisoner, who has a British passport.

Downing Street formally transmitted to the US delegation the willingness to welcome Lai immediately on British territory should the Chinese authorities agree to grant her a safe conduct for strictly humanitarian reasons.

The 78-year-old veteran media entrepreneur is serving a 20-year prison sentence, which was imposed last February, after being found guilty of sedition and conspiracy to collusion with foreign forces under the controversial national security legislation imposed by Beijing in 2020.

After almost six consecutive years in Stanley's maximum security prison and subject to a strict isolation regime for 23 hours a day, defense attorney Robert Pang denounced serious complications resulting from hypertension, diabetes and progressive loss of vision.

The situation led his son, Sebastien Lai, to state in the Capitol that the penalty in practice amounts to “a death sentence”.

Humanitarian urgency is further aggravated by the health of her daughter, Claire, diagnosed with aggressive cancer, a situation which prevents her from continuing the international campaign for her father's release.

The case has already provoked tensions during Trump's official visit to Beijing last May when the US President acknowledged Xi's refusal to release Lai, to whom the Chinese leader attributed the "great chaos" of the 2019 pro-democracy protests.

The position contrasted with the later pardon granted to the Protestant pastor and founder of the Zion Church, Ezra Jin Mingri.

Trump then stated that Xi told him that Lai was “his worst nightmare” and added not to be optimistic about the possibility of the entrepreneur’s release.

Though so Beijing as the Hong Kong Government rejects any external mediation, which they classify as a “ flagrant interference” in Chinese judicial sovereignty, independent analysts and lawyers in the former British colony consider that the meeting in Washington represents a political and procedural opportunity for Lai.