Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily, looks on as he leaves the Court of Final Appeal by prison van in Hong Kong on Feb. 1, 2021.Tyrone Siu/Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump says he plans to bring up the case of jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai with the Chinese authorities when he travels to this week to meet President Xi Jinping.
Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that he would like to see the 78-year-old businessman, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong earlier this year, released, along with a Christian pastor who has also been incarcerated.
Mr. Lai, who founded the now-shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong, was a prominent critic of the Chinese Communist Party before his arrest in 2020 under a Beijing-imposed national security law. His arrest was part of a wider crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong, a former British colony that was known for press freedom.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges, but was found guilty of sedition and colluding with foreign forces.
Trump’s deal making with Xi may determine Jimmy Lai’s fate
Mr. Trump will travel to China from May 13 to 15. He has already raised Mr. Lai’s case with the Chinese authorities and said he would do so again when he is in the country.
He said the U.S. has been “getting hundreds of people out of confinement and prisons that shouldn’t be there ... and many of them aren’t even citizens of the United States.”
Mr. Trump said Mr. Lai had “caused lots of turmoil” in China and went to jail, but that he’d “like to see him get out ... so I’ll bring him up again.”
He said he would also like to see a pastor who has family in the U.S. released, and would “bring his name up” to authorities. Mr. Trump didn’t specify the identity of the pastor to reporters, but he is believed to be Ezra Jin.
Ezra Jin is a Christian pastor with children who are U.S. citizens, and was arrested last year as part of a Chinese crackdown on religious institutions.
U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands before their meeting at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 30, 2025.Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
The imprisonment of Mr. Lai, a long-time pro-democracy activist and critic of Beijing, has been widely criticized by Western governments, including Britain, as well as press freedom organizations and human rights groups.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has said publicly, when asked by reporters, that he would also like to see Mr. Lai, a British national, released on humanitarian grounds. He has not said if he raised his case personally during his visit to Beijing in January.
In February, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said on social media that Canada is disappointed by the sentencing of Mr. Lai to 20 years in prison, also urging his immediate release on humanitarian grounds.
Rob Oliphant, parliamentary secretary to Ms. Anand, said last week at the Commons foreign affairs committee that the government had raised Mr. Lai’s case “at the highest levels.”
“We have raised it many times and we have raised it at the highest levels internationally, bilaterally,” Mr. Oliphant said.
Mr. Lai has diabetes and had been in solitary confinement for more than five years when he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. His international legal team said it was tantamount to a life sentence for the 78-year-old.
Jimmy Lai won’t appeal 20-year sentence as family lobbies for compassionate release
Political parties of all stripes in “every G7 country” want Mr. Lai’s freedom “because the quality of our own freedoms depend on it,” said Brandon Silver, a member of Mr. Lai’s international legal team and director of policy and projects at the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
“I hope we will see him returned to his family before it is too late,” he said in a text message on Monday.
The businessman used to visit Canada regularly and has close family in Ontario, and extensive business investments in the Niagara region, including a string of hotels. Mr. Lai’s twin sister lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
Caoilfhionn Gallagher, who leads Mr. Lai’s international legal team, said Jimmy Lai “has spent five-and-a-half hellish years in solitary confinement as a prisoner of conscience and has been sentenced to 20 more.”
“It’s long past time we bring this heroic man home to his family, where he can live out his days in peace. We are encouraged by President Trump’s commitment to freeing Mr. Lai,” she said in a statement. “His family is confident that the President can bring him home.”