What Western legal history tells us about Jimmy Lai's case

Yang Sheng says media mogul's verdict is not a rejection of freedom but a reaffirmation of a boundary recognized across time

Debate over the verdict in Jimmy Lai Chee-ying's national security case has been framed by Western critics as a clash between press freedom and state power. Yet when the discussion is detached from political sentiment and placed in the context of the longer tradition of legal history, the issue appears far less novel. Across mature political communities, actively colluding with external forces and soliciting foreign sanctions or hostile actions against one's own polity has never been treated as protected expression. It has consistently been regarded as one of the gravest public crimes. The judgment in Lai's case is not an anomaly but a contemporary application of this enduring legal boundary.

Security precedes free speech: a classical consensus

In the city-states of ancient Greece, free speech was never understood as an abstract right detached from collective security. By the fifth century BC, Athenian judicial practice had developed public accusations for acts of "betraying the polis". Liability did not require direct participation in warfare. Coordination with hostile powers through speech, correspondence, or political activity that weakened defense or fomented internal disorder could suffice, attracting penalties ranging from confiscation of property, to exile, to death.

During the Peloponnesian War in the fifth century BC, the political figure Antiphon was convicted and executed for conspiring with Sparta to alter Athens' political order. The decisive issue was not his opinions but his service to external interests. The same standard applied to Alcibiades, a general who defected to Sparta and then Persia, disclosed Athenian military intelligence and advised on weakening Athens' naval power. He was tried in absentia, stripped of his citizenship, and sentenced to death. Though he died in exile, Athenian law and collective memory fixed him permanently as a traitor.

If Greek city-states still relied partly on ethical judgment, Ancient Rome fully legalized this boundary. In Republican practice, aiding the enemy, inviting foreign intervention, or colluding with external forces were treated as the highest public crimes. The Catiline conspiracy of 63 BC, in which conspirators sought both internal revolt and external support, led to the execution of its core participants following Senate deliberation.

Under the Roman Empire, despite changes in political structure, covert foreign collusion remained punishable by confiscation, exile, or death. It was in this legal context that the maxim salus populi suprema lex esto — the safety of the people shall be the supreme law — operated not as rhetoric but as a living judicial principle. Without public security, rights themselves lose their foundation.

From medieval Europe to modern courts: changing forms, constant limits

Following Rome's collapse, European political forms evolved, yet suspicion of external interference endured. Medieval moral orders, reason of state in the Renaissance and modern statutory systems repeatedly reaffirmed the same limit.

Political thinkers differed widely, but converged on this point. The Florentine diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli argued that stability precedes lawful governance; Jean Bodin, a French jurist and philosopher, identified exclusion of foreign interference as core to sovereignty; Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius placed self-preservation before all specific rights; the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes warned that undermining public security dissolves law itself; John Locke — often called "the father of liberalism" — held that law cannot function where safety fails. Across traditions, security was treated not as the product of law but its precondition.

Modern jurisprudence reflects this logic. After World War II, William Joyce — who was born in New York to British parents — was convicted of treason and executed for broadcasting propaganda which systematically sought to undermine Britain's war effort on behalf of Nazi Germany. The court in London focused not on expression as such, but on whether Joyce's conduct strengthened enemy capacity. In the United States, a line of cases on "material support for terrorism" similarly holds that even ostensibly pure speech loses constitutional protection when it serves hostile organizations' strategic aims. In Holder vs Humanitarian Law Project, the Supreme Court affirmed that the First Amendment does not shield expression coordinated with enemy forces. When speech becomes part of a security threat, its legal character fundamentally changes.

Returning to Jimmy Lai's case

Seen within this legal lineage, the verdict in Jimmy Lai's case is not exceptional. The issue was never ordinary political criticism or journalistic commentary, but sustained, deliberate and organized efforts to solicit and coordinate foreign sanctions and hostile measures against China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Such conduct fits squarely within Article 29 of the Hong Kong SAR National Security Law on collusion with external forces. It mirrors ancient charges of betrayal, Roman crimes against the state, and treason-related offenses in common law jurisdictions.

It is especially worth noting that Hong Kong's legal order operates under the "one country, two systems" framework, combining common law traditions with China's own legal practice and philosophy. Treating national security as a legal red line is not uniquely Western. In the Chinese legal and political tradition, similar concerns appear no less early. The Book of Documents — one of the five classics of ancient Chinese literature — observes that "the people are the foundation of the state; when the foundation is secure, the state is at peace". The Guanzi — a foundational political text — warns that "a state becomes endangered when the people disperse and external enemies enter". From the Han and Tang dynasties onward, colluding with foreign powers, aiding enemies or inviting external threats were consistently treated as grave crimes. The legal boundary against external collusion is thus not the product of any single system but a cross-civilizational judgment repeatedly reaffirmed.

When some Western states enforce zero tolerance toward such conduct at home, yet relativize or repackage it abroad as protecting freedom, the damage extends beyond legal consistency. It erodes the moral credibility of the democratic and rule-of-law ideals they claim to defend. Principles that contract and expand with political convenience cannot sustain moral authority.

Lai's verdict is therefore not a rejection of freedom but a reaffirmation of a legal boundary recognized across time and systems: Freedom has limits, and national security is not negotiable. What should concern observers is not the law's response to conduct threatening public safety but the selective amnesia toward one's own legal traditions.

The author is a current affairs commentator. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.