53. Jimmy Lai is China's most feared critic: Mark L. Clifford (author of "The Troublemaker")

Jimmy Lai, the 77-year-old media tycoon of British citizenship, has been detained for over five years, mostly in isolation. He is one of over 1,500 political prisoners in Hong Kong.

Today's interview contains a clip of a conversation between Jimmy Lai and Natan Sharansky from November 20, 2020, one month before Lai’s arrest. Sharansky is a former Soviet dissident who spent nine years imprisoned as a refusenik during the 1970s and 1980s.

“... What you said about physical survival is not important. Spiritual survival is very important. Never back down. The peak of your life is when you were in prison. I totally understand, and that is very important; because I take up the responsibility of imagining myself influencing so many people as an example. If I don’t back down then they won’t back down. So that is a responsibility that is also uplifting spirit for me. And I really thank you so much for inspiring me on this.” - Jimmy Lai in November, 2020. (Transcript)

Mark L. Clifford is the author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic” (Simon & Schuster, 2024). He first met Lai in 1993.

Jimmy Lai was born in Guangdong, China. At age 12, he cramped into a fishing boat and arrived in Hong Kong as an illegal immigrant. The year was 1961. Hong Kong was still a British colony. In two decades Lai became a leader in the city’s fashion and textiles industry, then became a newspaper publisher. He launched Next magazine in 1990 then Apple Daily newspaper in 1995, both quickly became Hong Kong’s top-selling publications.

In 2001, Next opened its Taiwan offices. In this interview, Clifford recounts the importance of the Taiwan operation. It was supposed to have been a stepping-stone to publishing in China, Clifford explains.

Jimmy Lai stands out as a business tycoon who is an outspoken advocate for pro-democracy causes.

In 1989 Lai sent aid to students protesting at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. In 2014 he joined protesters at the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, and again in 2019 as million-plus residents marched against China for what became the largest series of demonstrations in the history of Hong Kong. 

Hong Kong, a special administrative region of People's Republic of China since 1997, implemented its National Security Law on June 30, 2020. Months later, on December 31, 2020, Jimmy Lai was arrested.

Apple Daily printed its final edition in Hong Kong on June 24, 2021. Five additional editors were jailed.

Our guest today is Mark Clifford, author of the new biography on Jimmy Lai. Clifford spent 28 years in Hong Kong before leaving the city in 2020. Clifford had been a director of Next Digital - publisher of the newspaper Apple Daily, executive director of the Asia Business Council, editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post, and publisher and editor-in-chief of The Standard.

Clifford left Hong Kong in 2020 and now serves as the founding president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation, a U.S.-based NGO established in 2022 to fight for Hong Kong and its people in the wake of China’s national security crackdown.

Recent updates on the Jimmy Lai trial: 

• March 6, 2025: Lai wrapped up his testimony.
  
  
• March 10, 2025: Lai’s son, Sebastien, wrote to the U.S. President Trump in an op-ed in the .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}