The Guardian view on Jimmy Lai: what Britain’s caution says about its relationship to Beijing’s power | Editorial

Australia defended a detained journalist despite the risks. Britain’s muted response to a media mogul’s harsh sentence suggests a narrowing view of what confrontation is worthIf the handed to the media mogul Jimmy Lai was meant to surprise, it would have been shorter. Twenty years behind bars is not a burst of rage. It is a sentence designed to make repression routine in Hong Kong. The 78-year-old founder of the shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily is now likely to die in prison after being convicted of sedition. The court was telling Hongkongers what kind of place they now live in, and signalling to foreign governments what kind of relationship Beijing expects them to accept.China’s national security law, imposed on Hong Kong in 2020, was designed to dismantle the former British colony’s pro-democracy movement and to place freedom of expression under permanent political constraint by the Chinese Communist party. From 2020 to 2026, at least have been arrested and 175 convicted under national security-related offences.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our section, please .