The contrast between America’s great island allies on opposite ends of the world couldn’t be more drastic.

Japan has just given its common-sense conservative prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, a two-thirds supermajority in the national legislature’s Lower House — her Liberal Democratic Party took the highest proportion of seats of any party since World War II.

It’s an enormous vote of confidence for Takaichi’s economic agenda, and for her willingness to get tough with China.

Beijing’s mouthpieces have called Takaichi an “evil witch.”

When she indicated Japan would aid Taiwan against an invasion, China’s consul general in Osaka threatened her: “The dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off.”

Such incendiary language didn’t intimidate Takaichi — nor, it turns out, Japan’s voters. 

Yet even as Japan was rallying to its courageous prime minister, China was inflicting humiliation on America’s closest ally in Europe.

Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong businessman and free-speech champion, has just been sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Communist authorities who run the island that was a British colony until 1999.

The 78-year-old Lai, who holds British citizenship, will die behind bars under that........

© New York Post