Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

A few weeks ago, a Chinese court sentenced businessman and politician Jimmy Lie to 20 years in jail.

Because he is 78 years old, that amounts to a life sentence.

Of course, jailing dissidents is a standard operating

procedure for communist dictatorships, but Lai is no standard dissident. A billionaire with

connections around the world, he could have escaped to Paris a long time ago, or maybe the U.S.

or maybe the Caribbean, but instead, he chose to stay in his adopted home of Hong Kong,

even after Beijing took control.

As Mark Clifford put it in an appropriately named book about Lai, the troublemaker, quote,

Instead of flinging, he doubled down.

In his last five months of freedom, he livestream weekly video programs featuring politicians, diplomats,

journalists, and religious figures.

He preferred to go to jail for freedom and democracy rather than abandon the city that he says, quote, gave me everything.

Lai was born in the late 1940s between the end of the Second World War and the Chinese Revolution.

As a child, his mother was persecuted by communist authorities, and he witnessed the beginnings

of the state-sponsored famine that occurred between 1958 and 1962 and claimed tens of

millions of lives.

In search of a better life, he snuck into the British territory of Hong Kong with only

a few dollars in his pocket.

After sleeping on the floor of the textile factory where he

worked, he eventually moved up to management. And finally, to ownership. He was both self-made and

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