Beijing’s media twisted Jimmy Lai’s 2019 remarks to justify his 20-year sentence—an investigation reveals the deliberate distortion behind the charge.
Newsroom (11/02/2026 Gaudium Press ) When Hong Kong entrepreneur and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai was sentenced on February 9 to 20 years in prison, the international reaction was one of shock and outrage. Governments, rights groups, and journalists condemned the verdict as another blow to what little remained of Hong Kong’s civic freedoms under Beijing’s tightening control. But inside China, a different story was being told—a story carefully shaped by state propaganda.
Across official media and pro-Beijing social platforms, the narrative appeared in near-identical form: Lai had not just conspired against the state, he had called for a nuclear attack on China.
It was a shocking allegation that seemed to place Lai beyond the realm of dissent and squarely in that of treason. “He publicly urged the United States to use nuclear weapons against China,” claimed a CGTN commentary soon after the verdict, citing a 2019 appearance at a U.S. think tank. “Even the American moderator was forced to interrupt his speech,” it added, calling the supposed remark “a crime against humanity.”
But there is a problem with this story: it never happened.
Uncovering the Source
The allegation traces back to a public interview delivered in English in July 2019 at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington, D.C. The video of the event remains freely available online—as does the full transcript. Together, they show that no point in the conversation included a call for nuclear force.
In the interview, Lai responded to a question about what kind of support Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement expected from the United States. He invoked an image from the Cold War: President John F. Kennedy’s historic “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, which had offered moral strength to Berliners facing Soviet pressure. Lai argued that Hong Kongers needed a similar demonstration of solidarity.
“We need support. We need confidence. We need hope,” he said. “We need to know that America is on our side… By supporting us, America also strengthens its own moral authority.”
It was in this context that Lai used the metaphor that state media later weaponized: “If we think we are starting a Cold War with China, a war of opposing values… it’s as if they are going into battle without any weapons, while you have nuclear weapons. You can finish them off in a minute.”
The sentence, heard in full, was clearly figurative—a rhetorical flourish comparing moral authority to an arsenal of unequal strength. The imagined “nuclear weapon” was moral influence, not military armament.
From the video, there were no interruptions, nor any sign that those present interpreted the words literally.
Trial Testimony: What Lai Actually Meant
During his March 2025 cross-examination, Lai directly addressed the quote. He explained that his expression “finish them off in a minute” was “a way of describing how moral authority could defeat the Chinese Communist regime’s values.” He stressed that his analogy was not a call for violence, but for resolve grounded in principles and human rights.
Further, Lai admitted that describing Hong Kong as “fighting on the front line in a new Cold War” was itself “an exaggeration,” meant to dramatize the city’s plight as China’s only territory where democratic values still flickered.
Those statements drew no mention in official Chinese reporting. There, the language of nuance—context, metaphor, and irony—was flattened into a literal accusation. By removing the frame of moral expression and presenting his words as a declaration of aggression, state media reconstructed Lai’s rhetoric into what appeared to be a confession of treachery.
The Anatomy of a Misrepresentation
An examination of Chinese state coverage surrounding the February 9 sentencing reveals a tightly coordinated information campaign. The “nuclear strike” claim appeared across multiple outlets almost simultaneously—Xinhua dispatches, CGTN commentary, and echoing posts on state-backed social media accounts. Each repeated the same narrative formula: Lai had “called on the U.S. to launch nuclear weapons,” evidence, they argued, of his “radical extremism.”
This technique—extracting a line from its context and reassigning its meaning—is a familiar tool of disinformation. By converting a metaphor into a literal threat, propaganda transforms moral resistance into political danger. In Lai’s case, it also served to justify an exceptionally harsh punishment under the National Security Law imposed in 2020, which criminalizes vaguely defined acts of subversion.
The official narrative created both a villain and a rationale: if Lai had wanted his own country annihilated, then a 20-year prison term could appear not as repression, but as defense.
What Beijing Chose Not to Report
Just as telling as what was misreported is what was omitted. In the same 2019 conversation, Lai spoke openly about his faith—a detail that sheds light on both his resilience and his worldview.
“I come from a very devout family,” he said. “I became a Catholic simply because of my family’s influence. I instinctively felt I needed the strength of faith because everyone was telling me that if they arrested ten people, I would be one of them.”
Faith, he explained, gave him endurance and perspective. “If I truly have a God in whom I believe, a faith to which I can entrust my whole life, all I have to do is simply do the right thing.”
It was this moral clarity—not any call to arms—that defined his approach to opposition. Yet not a single mainland outlet quoted or even referenced these statements. Instead, they recast Lai’s words into proof of a violent, anti-national agenda, erasing the spiritual foundation of his dissent.
Beyond the Verdict
Viewed through the lens of state propaganda, the invention of Lai’s “nuclear strike” claim reveals a broader lesson about the machinery of authoritarian information control. Under such systems, misquotation becomes law, and moral conviction becomes evidence. The distortion of Lai’s remarks turns language itself into an instrument of power—flattening ambiguity, suppressing faith, and criminalizing metaphor.
As global condemnation of the sentence continues, the stakes go far beyond one man’s imprisonment. The campaign against Jimmy Lai is a test case in how truth is rewritten for political ends, and how journalism—his own lifelong profession—can be buried under the very narratives it once sought to expose.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Asianews.it
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