I'm John Bachelor, Gordon Chang, at Gordon G. Chang with me, and we go immediately to Mark Simon,

our longtime colleague, a deputy and director at the now closed Apple Daily in Hong Kong,

and our connection to the fate of Jimmy Lai, persecuted and abused by the People's Republic of China,

and its stooge organization called the Hong Kong government

in a five-year show trial condemning Jimmy Lai to life or near two in jail in China for crimes that don't exist.

So we're looking very carefully now at his fate, his health,

and what comes next with Mark Simon. Mark, a very good day to you. The show trial is complete.

It's done. It's over. And Jimmy Lai's health is a major concern. Can you help us understand how he fares now?

Well, Jimmy's in his 79th year of life, as we like, you know, the term I use.

He's in a Hong Kong prison that was built pre-World War II.

He has no air conditioning in his room.

It is a small cell.

It's basically completely singular and solitary.

He is not doing well, as we would expect anybody who is in their 79th year not to do well.

Jimmy's diabetic.

He has some problems.

He has eyesight issues. He has other issues of everyone

else. And the Chinese have fundamentally now got somebody that they're headed towards martyrdom.

In other words, there is, they've got what they've needed out of him. They've shut his business.

They've closed everything.

Now it's just purely vindictive on the part of the Hong Kong government.

So I've really started to think the focus almost exclusively now needs to be on his health.

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