China

Billy Binion | 2.9.2026 6:00 PM

There's a reason Thanksgiving predictably gives way to yearly advice columns on how to placate the crazy uncle who somehow finds a way to make mashed potatoes political. In the U.S., criticizing the government is a national pastime—whether in polite conversation, on social media, or across the dinner table.

In China, meanwhile, it can amount to a life sentence.

Such is the case of Jimmy Lai, the 78-year-old Chinese political dissident who was sentenced on Monday to 20 years' imprisonment following his conviction last year on two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces and one count of publishing seditious material. That rap sheet sounds ominous. It is, but not in the way it reads. The portentous language of the charges masks that he was ultimately found guilty of exercising a basic right: railing against the state.

There is no shortage of material in China for government critics. That helps explain why, in 2020, the mainland imposed a "national security law" on Hong Kong, where Lai made his home. He was arrested that same year. The name........

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