27 Feb 2025 | Asia and Pacific, Hong Kong, News and features
Jimmy Lai has led many lives. An impoverished factory worker, a garment billionaire, owner of one of Hong Kong’s most influential papers, a born-again Catholic. He’s a man of mythical status; someone who doesn’t know their official birthday, who left Mao’s China spurred on by the taste of chocolate, who once lived in a house with a pet bear, monkey and flying fox. A son, a brother, a husband, a father, a boss, a friend. He is all of the above. But to many today he’s known mostly as a political prisoner, and not just any prisoner – arguably the prisoner the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) fears the most.
“The more I was forced to think about Jimmy in a larger historical context, the more convinced I am that there is nobody in the 75 years of CCP rule like Jimmy,” said Mark Clifford, the author of The Troublemaker, a new biography on Lai.
“He’s got three things that make them afraid of him,” Clifford continued. “They are: money, which means he can buy the best lawyers; a megaphone in the form of media; and principles. That may be the hardest of them all to deal with – because they don’t [have principles] right?”
Lai has been in custody since December 2020. In the years leading up to his arrest, he became a constant thorn in China’s side. In stark contrast to other tycoons who rose to the top in Hong Kong, he was one of the fiercest critics of the CCP and a leading figure campaigning for democracy in the former British territory, championing freedoms through his publications, his writings and his on-the-ground activism. This earned him the status of hero to many in Hong Kong, but the CCP branded him a “traitor” who threatened Chinese national security.
I’m chatting with Clifford a week after the launch of his book in London, and a few weeks after it was released in the USA, which is where he has flown in from. A journalist by training, Clifford lived in Hong Kong for decades from the late 1980s, and now leads the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, which campaigns for political prisoners specifically and for the improvement of rights in Hong Kong more generally.
Clifford is the obvious biographer of Lai, having known him since the early 1990s and having also served on the board of Next Digital, Lai’s media company. And it’s clear from Clifford’s book that he’s a big fan of Lai’s. That’s not to say the book is a hagiography. Clifford does recall Lai’s mistakes. He explained that he wanted to show Lai how he was and is, “warts and all”, and this makes the book a valuable addition – it’s a portrait of the man himself, rather than the symbol he has become.
Still, there is no denying, as Clifford told me, that it’s a “portrait of a genuinely heroic person”.
“The Chinese have been battling with him for 30 years. Every other business person has cracked, right? Everybody surrenders,” said Clifford, circling back to Lai’s defining qualities of strength and principle.
Of Clifford’s many memories (which include when Lai cooked for Clifford – an unusually down-to-earth gesture for a man of such wealth – and many trips on Lai’s boat), one of the most vivid is a dinner at Clifford’s own house straight after an infamous column of Lai’s from 1994. In it, he described then Chinese premier Li Peng as a gui dan – turtle egg. Beijing did not take the slight lightly – they closed down Lai’s Beijing store. At dinner, Lai spent the entire evening talking about it, how corrupt the CCP were and how they had to go.
“He was quite defiant. He just felt so passionately,” said Clifford.
It’s easy to point to several moments in Lai’s life and declare them the turning point. The protest movement and crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989 is one, when Lai’s garment factory supplied t-shirts to the protesters. Clifford sees his column in 1994 as another. Lai’s response was to write a follow-up piece in which he apologised for the bad language used in the first while highlighting that he still meant every word.
In The Troublemaker Clifford paints a picture of Lai as an outsider – an immigrant who wasn’t born into money and didn’t always easily fit in with the company he kept – and this was perhaps part of his success.
“It [his background] excluded him, but it also gave him a power, because it meant he could play by his own rules.”
He was always a natural entrepreneur, knowing what and how to sell and as he became more political his ambition became more focused:
“He had a product – democracy – which he wanted people to buy,” said Clifford, talking of Lai’s pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, which blended high-brow and low-brow content to help the message travel further.
As defiant as Lai might be, he is not unflappable. Clifford remembers a time he saw him break down in tears. Lai was giving a speech ahead of the Hong Kong handover in 1997 and it was then, to Clifford’s own knowledge, that Lai first spoke publicly about his concerns that he could be arrested.
“On the one hand, you’re thinking ‘come on, this can’t really happen’, because it seems so unreal. On the other hand, Jimmy Lai probably has a better sense of what could happen. So he was right. He did get an extra 20-something years of freedom, but, you know, he was right,” Clifford said on reflection.
In 2020 Hong Kong authorities passed the National Security Law. Many of those who had been heavily involved in the protest movement left Hong Kong. Lai did not. He was arrested twice that year and has not seen a day of freedom since.
His national security trial started at the end of 2023. He is now 77 and has diabetes. And yet despite the years in prison – the bulk of which he has spent in solitary confinement – and his poor health, when Clifford has watched him during his court appearances, he remains defiant.
“It seems like he’s giving as good as he’s getting. It’s really remarkable,” he noted.
Lai’s Catholic faith is part of the reason. He believes that no suffering is meaningless and has found refuge in faith. From his cell, he writes letters and sketches illustrations, often drawing on religious symbolism. A few years ago, a series of these were published in our magazine.
Clifford’s book is about Lai, which means it’s ultimately about Hong Kong, a city that Clifford tells me he loved as soon as he saw it. Arriving there in the late 1980s, Clifford was drawn to it as “a place of incredible freedom”. Even though today that freedom has gone, Clifford has not foregone all hope. He holds onto the belief that economic growth ultimately leads to more freedom. “Bread is not enough,” he said in no uncertain terms.
He used the conjunction “when” Lai gets out of prison rather than “if”, and told me how I’ll meet Lai one day and he’ll thank me and everyone who has helped get him out. As for this book, it’s one of Clifford’s many contributions to that effort. Of course the CCP will hate it but, like the book’s protagonist, Clifford has little time for what the CCP thinks.
“If the price of Jimmy getting out is that they pulp the book, that would be fine,” he said.
The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic was published in hardback in the USA in December 2024
4 Jan 2024 | Asia and Pacific, Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai, News and features, Political prisoners
The desperation with which the Hong Kong authorities and, by extension, the Chinese Communist Party are trying to stifle criticism has reached new levels this week, with fresh developments in the trial of publisher Jimmy Lai.
The 76-year-old Hong Kong-British businessman and publisher has been detained since December 2020. His assets were frozen in May 2021 and his publication Apple Daily was forced to close in June the same year. He has been in prison ever since.
On 18 December 2023, Lai’s long-delayed trial on charges of sedition and collusion with foreign forces began. Lai pleaded not guilty.
Earlier this week, the prosecution presented a list of people they termed as Lai’s co-conspirators.
Among Lai’s alleged co-conspirators are Bill Browder, founder of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign and Benedict Rogers, founder of Hong Kong Watch, along with James Cunningham, former US consul general in Hong Kong and chairman of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation and Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).
Browder and Rogers have dismissed the allegations against them.
Browder told Index this week, “I have never met or spoken to Jimmy Lai and for them to accuse me of being a co-conspirator with him or him with me is a total fabrication. It is just an indication of how illegitimate and trumped up the changes are against Jimmy Lai.”
Browder said that the charges are an indication of how China is “trying to take its authoritarian oppression international by going after people like me who have not set foot in China for 35 years”.
Benedict Rogers told Index that Lai is being punished for “daring to publish stories and opinions which Beijing dislikes; the crime of conspiracy to talk about politics to politicians; and conspiracy to raise human rights concerns with human rights organisations”.
He said, “Jimmy Lai is, as the head of his international legal team Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC puts it so brilliantly, charged with the crime of conspiracy to commit journalism.”
Rogers said his supposed conspiracy with Lai is nothing more than journalism.
“Citing a message from Mr Lai to me, requesting me to ask whether the last governor of Hong Kong Lord Patten would provide a comment to journalists from his newspaper, as evidence of a crime signals that the normal, legitimate, day-to-day work of journalists in Hong Kong is no longer possible. Journalism is not a crime, but in Hong Kong it now is,” he said.
Despite the flimsy nature of the charges against the alleged co-conspirators, Browder said his naming along with others in the court case is “a very real threat”.
“The Hong Kong authorities have come up with the national security law and are saying that Jimmy Lai has conspired with others to violate that law and there are criminal punishments. I can imagine a scenario in which the authorities decide to issue Interpol Red Notices against me, Benedict Rogers, Luke de Pulford and others and request assistance. This is what dictators and authoritarian governments do,” he said.
Browder is no stranger to being singled out by authoritarian regimes abusing the Interpol system.
Browder, through his Hermitage Capital Management fund, was once the largest foreign investor in Russia. In 2005, Browder was denied entry to the country and labelled as a threat to national security for exposing corruption in Russia.
Three years later, Browder’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky uncovered a $230 million fraud involving government officials and was arrested, thrown in jail without trial and kept in horrendous conditions. A year later, Magnitsky died.
Browder has since led the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign which seeks to impose targeted visa bans and asset freezes on human rights abusers and highly corrupt officials.
In the time since, Russia has called on Interpol eight times to issue red notices against Browder.
“Interpol has for a long time been the long arm of dictators to pursue their critics and opposition politicians. I have been a poster child of that in relation to Russia. We know that China and other countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, regularly abuse Interpol and Interpol doesn’t seem to have the controls and mechanisms in place for weeding out these illegitimate red notices,” he said.
As a result of Russia’s use of Interpol’s red notices, Browder said that it has closed off 95% of the world for him and that little will change if Hong Kong goes down the same route.
“It won’t change anything for me but will change things for all other people who have been named,” he said.
Browder said the case against Lai is abusive and he should be released immediately, adding: “This needs a robust response from the British Government. You can’t have a bunch of British citizens being threatened for nothing other than expressing their political opinions.”
Before Christmas, the recently appointed foreign secretary and former prime minister David Cameron called on Hong Kong to release Lai. Cameron said in a statement, “Hong Kong’s national security law is a clear breach of the Sino-British joint declaration. Its continued existence and use is a demonstration of China breaking its international commitments.”
Asked whether the new foreign secretary, who has a record of striving for a closer relationship with China from his previous time in office, would be the person to provide that robust response, Browder said: “I think we are living in a different world vis a vis China and I am confident he will do the right thing here.”
15 Dec 2023 | China, Hong Kong, News and features, Opinion, Russia, Ruth's blog, Ukraine
2023 has been a year with more news than days. Every corner of the world is a cacophony of broadcasts describing horror, injustice, sorrow and pain. There are times when you just want to cover your ears, close your eyes and hope for peace in all senses of the word. But in this barrage of bulletins dictators thrive.
Whilst the United Nations scrutinises the Israel-Hamas war, the United States Congress holds crunch talks over the future of funding for Ukraine in its defence and Beijing gears up for the trial of Jimmy Lai, Putin lurks in the shadows. His nefarious and nihilistic plots continue their march to his single goal of power at all costs. This week Vladimir Putin announced that he will be seeking yet another term as President of the Russian Federation. He boasts that he will hold polls in the occupied territories he illegally invaded in Ukraine and brushes over the matter he is riding roughshod over the Russian constitution once again.
However, Putin’s determination to cling to power can only happen when he oppresses and silences dissidents. The latest victim of the Russian President’s tyranny is Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen. The trumped-up charges from the Kremlin are “spreading false information about the Russian army”. This is the latest crackdown on dissent being undertaken by the Russian state.
This week we also heard that lawyers for Alexei Navalny have been unable to contact the Russian opposition leader. His legal team have made two attempts to reach the two penal colonies where they believe Navalny is being held. Neither of the colonies have responded to the requests for information. Only last week the jailed Russian opposition leader fell ill within prison and was due to appear in court again this week.
Another thorn in the side of Putin, the former member of a Moscow municipal council Alexei Gorinov, has grown ill whilst incarcerated for seven years in prison. Gorinov no longer has the strength to sit up or even speak.
Gessen, Navalny and Gorinov all reflect the autocratic approach by Putin to his critics: imprisonment, abuse, and hunting down those who are able to escape. Whether you are a journalist, politician or member of the public in Putin’s Russia you are at risk of the whims of a man who yearns only for more control.
Whilst war rages in Ukraine it is easy to lose sight of the dissidents saying loudly that the Russian state doesn’t act in their name. During turbulent times it’s all too easy for us to be deafened by events and for dissidents’ voices to be muffled. We cannot allow that to happen and as long as Index on Censorship exists we will give a megaphone to those fighting for freedom of expression to ensure you can hear what they are saying.
To finish – as we reach the end of 2023 – the only thing I can really promise you is that the team at Index will be required to keep fighting for dissidents in 2024 – and that will do our job with the dedication and commitment that you expect from us.
So from the team at Index – we wish you well over the holidays and hope for a much better 2024.
27 Apr 2023 | China, FEATURED: Francis Clarke, Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai, News and features, Political prisoners, United Kingdom
The UK government is failing to acknowledge a British citizen unfairly imprisoned in Hong Kong amid a wider targeting of journalists and pro-democracy campaigners in the city state, said the authors of a new report on issues of freedom in Hong Kong.
On Monday, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong (APPG) met at Portcullis House, London, to discuss their new report, Inquiry into Media Freedom in Hong Kong: The case of Jimmy Lai and and Apple Daily, which offers a sobering look into the state of media freedoms in the once vibrant city. Index contributed to the report.
The session was headed by Baroness Bennett of Manor Caste, the joint chair of the APPG. Other speakers included Lai’s international lawyer, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, Baroness Helena Kennedy and Sebastian Lai, Jimmy Lai’s son.
One of the aims of the report is to provoke a response from the British government regarding Lai. A pro-democracy figure, media tycoon and British citizen, he is in a Hong Kong prison after sentencing for unauthorised assembly and fraud charges. In addition to these charges are more serious ones of violating Hong Kong’s national security law, which was passed in 2020. Six of his colleagues at Apple Daily, the newspaper founded by Lai, are also in jail charged under the national security laws.
Kennedy believes the case of Jimmy Lai should be treated as a political priority by the UK government not only because Lai is a British citizen, but also because of the the joint declaration that gives the UK a place in trying to guarantee the rights of people in Hong Kong.
She added: “It is the illegitimate use of law against a citizen by the government, and against the protection of media freedom and expression in Hong Kong.”
Lord Alton of Liverpool, a vice chair of the APPG, echoed Kennedy’s called for Magnitsky-style sanctions against allies of the Hong Kong authorities in the UK as further action is needed. “We have to go beyond sanctions, to freezing the assets and redeploying the resources of those who have been able to use London as a place for their activities,” he said.
Gallagher said the Hong Kong authorities have weaponised their laws to target pro-democracy campaigners and journalists in new ways. Gallagher, who represents Jimmy Lai, as well as Maria Ressa from the Philippines who was charged with tax evasion, says that this is a new tactic – trying to discredit them by painting them as bad people rather than using the more traditional tactic of defamation. “It’s straight from the dictators’ playbook,” she said.
Kennedy echoed this by stating fraud and tax affair charges are common tactics used against journalists in Hong Kong before more serious charges are later served. They added that as a result of supporting Lai they’ve received a series of threats and intimidation from state actors.
Sebastian Lai said he is also a target for the Chinese authorities. He acknowledged international support regarding his father’s cause but expressed disappointment in the UK government’s attitude. He said: “The language the UK government has used has been nowhere close to what America has used for not only a British citizen, but my father.”
However, he did acknowledge thanks for Anne Marie Trevelyan, MP and Minister of State in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, for meeting him.
Fiona O’ Brien, the UK bureau director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said it needed to be waved in the face of those in power, “along with journalists writing stories, lawyers pursuing legal routes and advocates in society. We need to continue to shine a light.”
The report can be found here.
