Chan Kayu
On February 9, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region High Court sentenced Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison for two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces and one count of conspiring to publish seditious publications. The Wall Street Journal, a long-time supporter of Jimmy Lai, promptly published an opinion piece titled “Jimmy Lai Gets a Death Sentence.” Setting aside the misleading headline, what caught the author's attention was the article's mention that five U.S. congressmen have nominated Jimmy Lai for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, stating that “no one deserves this award more than him.”
In my observation, this isn't the first time U.S. lawmakers have campaigned for Jimmy Lai's Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Yet despite annual nominations ending in failure, they persist with unwavering enthusiasm. This “relentless” stance invites reflection: What value does Jimmy Lai truly hold that warrants such “persistence”?
Driven by immense curiosity, the author investigated the source of these nominations—the website of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC). What emerged was a bittersweet revelation: the “honorable” U.S. lawmakers have never taken Jimmy Lai seriously! Their campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize for him is nothing short of an international farce! Why?
First, the nomination content remains utterly unoriginal year after year. In introductions typically under 200 words, U.S. lawmakers consistently describe Jimmy Lai using hollow phrases like “founder of Apple Daily” and “critic of the government.” The 2023 introduction, at a mere 48 words, was half as long as the one for Joshua Wong. This year saw a slight addition of hollow praise like “a global symbol of nonviolent resistance against authoritarianism” or “upholding peace, democracy, and the rule of law through free media.” Yet the writing remains as sloppy and perfunctory as ever, as if merely going through the motions to fulfill some obligation. This half-hearted approach is less an expression of “support” for Jimmy Lai and more a political performance and routine gesture.
Second, the number of co-signers is meager, and the same few individuals repeatedly appear. With over 500 members in the U.S. Congress, only 2 to 5 participated in nominating Jimmy Lai. Take 2024 as an example: only Christopher H. Smith and Jeffrey A. Merkley co-signed. In other years, it was mostly politicians like James P. McGovern and John Moolenaar, who have long held anti-China stances. More ironically, as long as the nomination list includes one Democratic and one Republican lawmaker, these politicians dare to claim the move represents a “bipartisan consensus.” This tactic of packaging the collusion of individuals as the opinion of the majority is undoubtedly a mockery of democratic procedures.
Most crucially, the nomination timing has repeatedly and deliberately missed the Nobel Peace Prize nomination deadline. According to the Nobel Peace Prize nomination rules, January 31st of each year is the deadline for nominating candidates for that year. As seasoned politicians, these prominent members of Congress should be well aware of this rule. Yet upon review, it was found that with the exception of 2024, all nominations by U.S. lawmakers for Jimmy Lai were submitted after the respective deadlines (e.g., the 2023 nomination was made on February 2, and the 2026 nomination on February 4). Anyone with basic knowledge understands this means such nominations are fundamentally ineligible for the award in the year they are submitted. This deliberate act of “late nomination” inevitably raises questions: Are these politicians genuinely “seeking honor” for Jimmy Lai, or are they using nominations as a pretext to interfere in China's internal affairs?
This annual nomination farce exposes the hypocrisy and impotence of certain Western powers' China strategy. The Nobel Peace Prize has extremely low nomination thresholds—university presidents and professors across disciplines can participate—yet even so, Jimmy Lai's nomination is treated with such carelessness. This inevitably raises the question: If Western politicians cannot even manage a symbolic award with proper diligence, how can they be expected to exert genuine pressure for “releasing Jimmy Lai”? Their support likely extends no further than mere “solidarity.” For Jimmy Lai and his supporters to still fantasize about external forces securing their acquittal is nothing short of wishful thinking. Wake up!
InsightSpeak
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
Liang Yaqi, Chinese Association of Hong Kong & Macao Studies
Since the release of Hong Kong’s first five-year plan, one line of interpretation has grouped together its provisions on cooperation with the mainland and security governance, and from there concluded that a substantial part of the plan is not really about Hong Kong’s own development. With the latest Policy Address continuing to place strong emphasis on national security, the argument goes a step further: Hong Kong’s development agenda, it is said, is increasingly being crowded out by other priorities.
The central problem with this interpretation is that it artificially separates policy objectives that are, in reality, deeply intertwined.
For Hong Kong today, can “integration with the mainland,” “security” and “economic development” really be treated as three distinct agendas?
The answer is more complicated than it may appear.
On the one hand, the five-year plan explicitly calls for Hong Kong to align itself proactively with national development strategies. On the other, it also defines Hong Kong as a “super connector” between the mainland and global markets.
The provisions concerning the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, or CEPA, go further still, calling for wider access to the mainland market for Hong Kong service providers. In finance, the plan proposes deeper links with both mainland and overseas markets, enabling international capital to participate through Hong Kong in the growth of China and Asia while helping mainland companies and capital expand globally.
To classify all of this simply as “supporting mainland policy” is already to assume something that should instead be examined: that anything connected with national development is, by definition, separate from Hong Kong’s own development.
Yet Hong Kong’s economic structure makes that distinction increasingly difficult to sustain.
Hong Kong’s most distinctive economic value lies in its ability to connect two economic spheres vastly larger than itself. On one side is mainland China; on the other are global capital, trade, professional services and institutional networks. Much of Hong Kong’s competitive advantage has long rested on precisely this intermediary role.
That is why, in many cases, there is no clear line separating policies that “serve the country” from policies that “develop Hong Kong.”
Rather than asking how much of the plan is devoted to the mainland, the more meaningful question is whether those connections ultimately make Hong Kong more difficult to replace.
If closer access to China’s vast market generates greater demand for international financing, asset management, legal and arbitration services, RMB business and corporate globalization in Hong Kong, then deeper integration with the mainland and a stronger international role can advance at the same time.
Security should be understood within the same framework.
A common intuition is that policy attention is finite: the more emphasis placed on security, the less attention remains for economic growth and social welfare. But for a highly open international financial centre such as Hong Kong, security and development do not exist in a simple zero-sum relationship.
Capital does not merely chase the highest nominal return. It seeks the best risk-adjusted return.
For a highly open international financial centre, security is not separate from development. It is part of the economic environment that businesses and investors assess when deciding where to place capital, establish regional headquarters or manage wealth. They look not only at taxes and growth prospects, but also at financial stability, reliable infrastructure, cybersecurity and regulatory predictability.
In other words, companies choosing Hong Kong are not simply choosing lower taxes or office space. They are choosing an institutional environment that reduces uncertainty.
The International Monetary Fund’s 2026 assessment of Hong Kong illustrates this relationship well. On the one hand, the IMF recognised the financial system’s strong capital and liquidity buffers and its sound regulatory foundations. On the other, it noted that Hong Kong’s highly open and interconnected economy leaves it exposed to geopolitical and trade tensions, volatility in global financial markets, and disruptions to trade and capital flows. It also highlighted risks associated with commercial real estate, cybersecurity and operational resilience.[1]
The more open Hong Kong is, the more important strong risk management becomes.
This is also why the five-year plan’s emphasis on “coordinating development and security” should not be understood solely through a narrow conception of security. The plan also calls for stronger economic and urban resilience, better risk-warning mechanisms, closer cross-departmental coordination, improved cybersecurity and emergency governance, and greater use of technology to enhance the efficiency of public administration.
These priorities reflect a broader shift in global economic governance in recent years: economic competition is moving away from a singular pursuit of maximum efficiency towards a balance between efficiency and resilience.
The earlier phase of globalisation prized the lowest possible costs, minimal inventories and ever-longer cross-border supply chains. After the pandemic, geopolitical conflict, financial volatility and repeated supply-chain disruptions, however, governments and companies have become increasingly concerned with a different question: when a system is hit by a shock, can it continue to function?
For Hong Kong, that resilience is itself part of what an international financial centre offers. Clear rules, predictable enforcement and reliable institutions allow businesses to price risk with greater confidence; uncertainty, by contrast, raises risk premiums and discourages long-term investment.
The proper measure of Hong Kong’s future security governance, therefore, is not how often security appears in the five-year plan or the Policy Address. The more important question is whether that governance ultimately makes Hong Kong more predictable.
Over the next five years, several developments will be worth watching.
As Hong Kong deepens its links with the mainland, will demand increase for international capital to use the city as a platform for allocating assets in China and across Asia? As mainland companies expand globally, will they rely more heavily on Hong Kong’s financial, legal and professional services? Will Hong Kong’s ties with Europe, the United States, ASEAN and the Middle East deepen at the same time? And will security governance reduce the uncertainty costs inherent in operating an open economy?
If these functions become stronger, then “integrating into national development,” “safeguarding security” and “remaining international” are not competing objectives.
They may, in fact, be three dimensions of the same question:
In an increasingly fragmented and uncertain world, how can Hong Kong remain an interface that both China and the rest of the world want to use—and one that neither can easily replace?
[1]https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/2026/114/002.2026.issue-114-en.xml?cid=576398-com-dsp-crossref
