Jimmy Lai is risking everything for democracy. We can't ignore what China is doing

For those who speak of the global perils to democracy, a grim milestone deserves their rapt attention and full-throated condemnation: The Feb. 9 sentencing in a Chinese court of Hong Kong dissident Jimmy Lai.

In the imagination of the Chinese Communist Party, Lai’s sentencing closes the book on a troublesome man: a Catholic, a publisher, a democrat. Lai, 78 and in failing health, was condemned under the elastic logic of the Beijing-imposed National Security Law, and is meant to disappear quietly into history.