Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media magnate hailed by some as a champion of democracy and condemned by others as a danger to the state, is approaching the final phase of his trial under Beijing’s national security law, the BBC reports.

Closing arguments begin this week for the 77-year-old, accused of colluding with foreign forces. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

The case has attracted considerable international attention. British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has called for Lai’s release, but has been ignored - Beijing does not recognise his dual British and Chinese citizenship, treating him solely as a Chinese national.

Lai himself has been in custody since December 2020, and is the most prominent figure prosecuted under the national security legislation introduced that year. The law followed huge pro-democracy protests in 2019, and criminalises a broad range of activities deemed by Beijing to constitute subversion, secession or collusion with foreign powers.

Critics say the measure has been used to dismantle Hong Kong’s freedoms and silence dissent. It has, without doubt, seen free speech in Hong Kong dry up in the years since the country fell to China with seemingly little done by the tens of thousands that took to the streets back in 2019 and 2020 to win win it back.

Lai’s supporters meanwhile, argue his prosecution exemplifies the weaponisation of the legal system for political ends.

Born in Guangzhou to a prosperous family stripped of its wealth after the Communist takeover in 1949, Lai fled China at the age of 12, arriving in Hong Kong as a stowaway the BBC adds. He supposedly taught himself English while working in a clothing shop, eventually founding the Giordano retail chain in 1981.

The Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, however, transformed him from businessman to outspoken activist. He began publishing columns critical of the crackdown and founded a publishing house, which expanded into some of Hong Kong’s most influential outlets, including the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper – a publication also published in print until 2021 in Taiwan, then online until 2022 when it was rebranded.

Lai’s work to this end made him an obvious target for Beijing even before Hong Kong fell. Threats to close his mainland stores prompted him to sell Giordano, while his publications came under increasing political and commercial pressure.

He survived documented arson attacks, an assassination plot, and repeated arrests, yet continued to criticise the Chinese state openly.

When the national security law was passed in June 2020, Lai warned it marked the “death knell” for Hong Kong. He was right, but even in the face of such an outcome, Apple Daily remained unflinchingly critical until it was forced to close in 2021 after police raids and asset freezes.

Since 2020, Lai himself has faced a series of charges, including unauthorised assembly and fraud. His supporters say he is paying the price for his commitment to defending the freedoms Hong Kong once enjoyed.

Hong Kong has gone – Taiwan and the South China Sea must not follow

As much as the story of Jimmy Lai being is both a personal and political tale of one man’s rise from penniless stowaway to billionaire entrepreneur, and of the city whose freedoms allowed him to thrive though, times have changed.

Hong Kong will never again be an outpost of political and personal freedoms surrounded by a land of Thought Police under one-party rule.

The former British enclave’s fall was not the product of sudden invasion, but of slow, deliberate erosion. Beijing’s national security law, passed in 2020, was framed as a stabilising measure. In practice, it outlawed dissent, dismantled the opposition, and shuttered independent media. It was a velvet-gloved annexation – and the wider world allowed it to happen.

That silence was and is dangerous, because history demonstrates time and time again that unchecked aggression rarely stops at the first prize.

In the 1930s, the world watched as Imperial Japan annexed Manchuria, then expanded further into China, emboldened by the lack of serious pushback. Nazi Germany absorbed Austria and the Sudetenland under the guise of restoring “order” and protecting “ethnic kin” - arguments disturbingly similar to Beijing’s claims over Taiwan.

Each time, the calculation was simple: if the aggressor meets no decisive resistance, why stop?

Hong Kong is today’s Sudetenland. Taiwan cannot be tomorrow’s Poland, France, Holland, because then – just as Germany eyed the UK back in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Japan will be next.

The parallels are stark: a once-autonomous territory absorbed into an authoritarian state, its legal guarantees brushed aside, its freedoms extinguished. Beijing has now banked that victory, confident the costs were minimal.

The next steps are clear – and Taiwan is at the top of the list.

Taiwan is not simply another territorial claim though. It is a functioning democracy of 24mn people, a lynchpin of the global technology supply chain, and a strategic anchor in the first island chain that limits China’s naval reach into the Pacific.

Were Beijing to seize Taiwan, the consequences would be geopolitical as well as moral: the collapse of one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies and the shift of the Pacific balance of power in China’s favour.

The South China Sea is the other great prize.

Already, Beijing has built military installations on artificial islands, ignoring international legal rulings. This sea carries a third of global trade and holds rich reserves of oil and gas. Control here would give Beijing economic leverage over nations as far afield as Europe and Africa, and the ability to disrupt and in turn, control global commerce at will.

If the world’s reaction to these moves mirrors the passivity shown over Hong Kong, the results will be irreversible.

The analogy to the 1930s is again apt: failure to defend Czechoslovakia emboldened Hitler to march into Poland, triggering a far costlier conflict. The question for today is whether Taiwan will be defended, or sacrificed in the hope that Beijing’s ambitions will end there.

History also shows that deterrence works best before conflict begins. NATO’s stance in Western Europe during the Cold War - clear red lines, credible military readiness, and unity of purpose - prevented Soviet expansion without a direct clash. By contrast, the failure to deter Imperial Japan in Asia in the 1930s led to a regional war that became global.

To prevent history repeating itself, the response to Beijing’s designs on Taiwan and the South China Sea must be unequivocal and be made of such overwhelming grit that Beijing will, like the Soviet Union with Europe, forever be afraid to even try taking Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Jimmy Lai’s imprisonment is not just the silencing of a single dissident; it is a case study in how authoritarian states neutralise opposition while the world debates procedural niceties. He warned in 2020 that the national security law would destroy Hong Kong’s status and freedoms. He was right, and he has paid for that with his freedom. It is likely he will now die in prison.

The warning he sounded applies equally to Taiwan and the South China Sea. These are not remote disputes but does Taiwan have its own Jimmy Lai willing to serve as lightning rod if need be?

It is time for the global community to draw a line in the sand, and for Beijing to understand that it is one the rest of the world is prepared to hold.

Hong Kong is gone. Taiwan and the South China Sea must not, at any cost, follow suit.