Jimmy Lai arrives at a 2020 hearing in Hong Kong. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
The fate of Lai Chee-ying, "Jimmy" Lai, the Hong Kong business mogul who founded the retailer Giordano, the media company Next Digital, and the newspaper Apple Daily, was sealed 30 years ago. It just took another two decades for the Chinese Communist Party to imprison him. Outraged by the CCP’s massacre of protesters at Tiananmen Square, he insulted the brutal Chinese premier Li Peng in a regular column he wrote in his own Next magazine in 1994. As the author and Hong Kong democracy activist Mark Clifford tells it in his fascinating new biography of Lai, The Troublemaker, that column in which he criticized the barbarism, corruption, and decay of the Chinese Communist Party marked the beginning of Lai’s open war with Beijing.
The thuggish CCP viewed Lai as a unique and unusual threat given his wealth, ownership of a media company, deep Catholic faith, and commitment to democracy and free enterprise. They struck back by targeting Giordano in China, manufacturing "legal" violations and shutting its stores. Instead of giving in and protecting his wealth, Lai strengthened his commitment to the cause of freedom in China and Hong Kong. For his efforts, Lai now languishes in a Hong Kong jail for violating the "national security law" imposed upon it by Beijing in 2020 and many other trumped-up charges. His trial has begun—just after 45 Hong Kong democracy activists have been sentenced to prison under the city’s draconian anti-democracy laws.
Even before his column and ensuing fight with the CCP, Jimmy Lai had a remarkable story. Born in Guangzhou in 1947, he stowed away on a boat to Hong Kong at the age of 12. He began working in childhood and, through his grit, entrepreneurial brilliance, and charismatic personality, he rose from extreme poverty to running one of Hong Kong’s largest clothing retailers. Along the way, he was mentored by and developed friendships with many Americans and other Westerners who inspired his intellectual and spiritual awakening. As an up-and-coming businessman in the 1970s, he made no secret of his hatred of the communists, leading one dinner companion in New York City to give him Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. He devoured the guide to limited government and economic freedom and many like it, including Karl Popper’s books on the dangers of totalitarianism. Lai says this intellectual journey inspired his commitment to become a "useful person" who would devote himself to the "cause of freedom." He would subsequently hand these books out en masse to employees and colleagues and use them as his guidepost for challenging the Chinese Communists.
Lai was a man of action and surely these books provided intellectual ballast for what he already knew in his heart as a successful businessman. Unlike the PRC, 1990s Hong Kong allowed for economic freedom protected by the rule of law. A man with his vision and penchant for hard work could succeed there but not in totalitarian China. For Lai, this contrast provided empirical evidence for Hayek’s theories. Lai wanted to help set the political and economic foundation for entrepreneurs to succeed on the mainland as well. As he supported prominent Tiananmen protest leaders such as Wang Dan and American academic human rights activist Perry Link, he decided to marry his next business venture to his commitment to freedom in China. He launched his media businesses to help push the free flow of information. Like many dedicated to reform in China in the ’90s, Lai believed the power of knowledge and information, as well as China’s desire to prosper based on some free-market principles, would pave the way for democracy. Unfortunately for now this thesis has not proved correct.
Lai’s media ventures prospered as he combined aggressive tabloid coverage of Hong Kong’s previously untouchable, politically connected business tycoons with serious advocacy for liberalism and free enterprise. While its paparazzi style of uncovering scurrilous scandals involving the rich and famous made it popular with its readers, Next magazine also covered the fast spread of the SARS virus emanating from China in 2003, which doubtless allowed Hong Kong and Taiwanese officials to better prepare their populations. No such media existed by 2019 when the COVID pandemic began to spread from Wuhan, allowing the Chinese government to cover it up to protect itself, leading to millions of deaths worldwide.
Lai was impressed with Taiwan’s democracy as he witnessed the first handover of power from the dominant KMT party to the upstart DPP in 2000. He moved to Taiwan and established similar media enterprises there. While he embraced the young democracy, he remained critical of its economic statism and the monopolistic policies that prohibited him from obtaining television licenses he sought. He unsuccessfully preached the gospel of free markets to a country committed to the heavy hand of government intervention in the marketplace.
During the period that his media empire thrived, Lai befriended pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong such as the renowned attorney Martin Lee and Bishop Joseph Zen. He converted to Catholicism under the tutelage of Zen, as well as Wall Street Journal writer Bill McGurn and writer David Aikman. Lai’s mix of business success, commitment to free market and classically liberal ideals, and deep Catholic faith made him a natural ally to traditional American conservatives. While he maintained old friendships with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, he garnered the commitment of then-vice president Mike Pence, then-national security adviser John Bolton, and then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo to Hong Kong’s freedom and his causes. In the end, though, there was little these powerful men could do to save Hong Kong or Jimmy Lai from the determined cruelty of the CCP.
Lai’s downfall began in 2014 when he was one of the pro-democracy leaders arrested during the Umbrella Movement, a mass protest against the CCP’s interference into how Hong Kong elects its chief executive. The Hong Kong people were promised universal suffrage, but Beijing made clear that it would have the final say over who governs the city. Lai provided financial and moral support to the protesters. He was psychically threatened and attacked as organized crime and violent groups affiliated with the Hong Kong police left machetes, axes, and threatening messages in his home. Thugs threw explosives at his home and the offices of Next Media. This was part of a pattern of media intimidation that had been present since the handover of control of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997 but accelerated when Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
Six years after the Umbrella Movement, in February 2020, Lai was arrested for "illegal assembly" during the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests, which began in opposition to a proposed law allowing for the transfer of Hong Kongers facing criminal charges to mainland China for prosecution. Lai was among several pro-democracy figures arrested. In June 2020, the Chinese Communists dealt a knockout blow to Hong Kong’s democrats. The CCP enacted the "national security law," bypassing the regular procedures of Hong Kong’s legislature. Lai was arrested at his home for alleged fraud and "collusion with foreign forces"—the most serious crime in the CCP’s eyes. Hundreds of Hong Kong police officers raided the headquarters of Apple Daily. The Chinese authorities pressured international banks such as HSBC to freeze Lai’s assets. The newspaper was forced to close soon after.
Clifford skillfully sketches the life of a remarkable man, weaving it through the tragic history of Hong Kong, now effectively run by Beijing. The writer had the privilege of meeting Lai several times. He was endowed with inhuman courage, willing to risk his life and fortune for causes greater than himself. His life’s passion was a free and democratic China that reestablished a moral core. While President-elect Trump promised during his campaign to work to free him, Lai has said he will not surrender his beliefs for freedom. He seems prepared to die a martyr. His goal is to maintain his dignity and the freedom of his soul.
Lai is a man who thoroughly confounds the CCP with its reductionist and distorted view of a corruptible human nature. He sticks to transcendent principles and cannot be bought off or intimidated. For Beijing, nothing evokes more terror than the embodiment of its lies exposed by such men. Lai may remain imprisoned but his moral courage is forever a part of Hong Kong’s history.
The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic
by Mark L. Clifford
Free Press, 288 pp., $28.99
Dan Blumenthal is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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