Lai calls the idea of a US-funded color revolution "ridiculous." The pair fell in love and married. As the Great Chinese Famine gripped mainland China in 1960, Lai smuggled himself out of the southern mainland province of Guangdong and into Hong Kong in the bottom of a fishing boat. Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. "All of them have had to pay something to get the protection of the people that control them in mainland China," says Lai. "I looked at it again and said, 'Shit, this is horrible.' We are fighting their war in the enemy camp." By 1992, the Shoppers pass a Giordano retail store on a rainy day in Hong Kong, 22 March 2005. "If we fight, we might have a miracle happen," he says. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds.This freedom was the first feeling I had about Hong Kong and it never disappointed me.

By continuing, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. JD.com says yesRemembering the life of Stanley Ho, Macao's 'godfather of gambling'Here's how China is trying to control the Covid-19 narrativeThe moral dilemma of doing business in China, explainedChina censors a lot, from Winnie the Pooh to the NBAWhy American fast food chains will do anything to win in China Lai had already led an extraordinary life by the time he founded Next Digital group, which owns Apple Daily, in the 1980s. China has The marches continued: 160,000 people, then 1 million. “And to think that what is right will eventually prevail.”Asked why he risked both his wealth and freedom by criticizing Beijing and publicly supporting Hong Kong’s democracy movement, he replied: “I’m a troublemaker.“I came here with nothing, the freedom of this place has given me everything. But if not successful, it is a real worry whether he cannot sustain his operation in the long run." He was 12 years old when he fled his village in mainland China, arriving in Hong Kong as a stowaway on a fishing boat. Since then, Lai's role as one of Hong Kong's most prominent rabble-rousers has threatened his fortune, subjected him to death threats and made him a symbol of the city's tensions with mainland China. "We're not shocked. "We identify as Hong Konger like never before." (Photo by Anthony WALLACE / AFP)Lai’s arrest on Monday under a new national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong will come as little surprise to observers, including the publisher himself, who said he knew he would be a prime target.“I’m prepared for prison,” the 71-year-old told AFP from the offices of Next Digital, Hong Kong’s largest and most rambunctiously pro-democracy media group, in an interview two weeks before the security law was enacted on June 30.“If it comes, I will have the opportunity to read books I haven’t read. "Not only for what he did in the news media but in other kinds of industry." Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc.2018. When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the city was guaranteed its own legal system and certain democratic freedoms until 2047, when it will likely return in total to Beijing. Hong Kong was still under British rule but barreling towards reunification with China in 1997. "Xi Jinping was taking her hand (at public events), she was But the business community was more alarmed. TrumpIf mounting international pressure coincides with an economic slowdown and job losses, China could change, speculates Lai. Finally an estimated 2 million people took to the streets on June 16. Whenever I am in business, I create something different from the norm. The bill was suspended, but it was too late to quell the anger it had stirred. The only thing I can do is to be positive.”Few Hong Kongers generate the level of vitriol from Beijing that Lai does.For many residents of the semi-autonomous city, he is an unlikely hero But in China’s state media he is a “traitor”, the biggest “black hand” behind last year’s huge pro-democracy protests and the head of a new “Gang of Four” conspiring with foreign nations to undermine the motherland.Like many of Hong Kong’s tycoons, Lai rose from poverty.He was born in mainland China’s Guangdong province into a wealthy family but they lost it all when the communists took power in 1949.Smuggled into Hong Kong aged 12, Lai toiled in sweatshops, taught himself English, and eventually founded the hugely successful Giordano clothing empire.But his path diverged from those of his contemporaries in 1989, when China sent tanks to crush pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.He founded his first publication shortly after and penned columns regularly criticizing senior Chinese leaders.Authorities began closing his mainland clothing stores, so Lai sold up and plowed the money into a tabloid empire.Asked why he didn’t just keep quiet and enjoy his wealth like Hong Kong’s other tycoons, Lai replied: “Maybe I’m a born rebel, maybe I’m someone who needs a lot of meaning to live my life besides money.”In this picture taken on June 16, 2020, millionaire media tycoon Jimmy Lai, 72, speaks during an interview with AFP at the Next Digital offices in Hong Kong.
"That doesn't mean that the Communist Party will collapse," he adds. To find out more, Societal fragmentation has been a theme of the current unrest, as protesters and police have faced off in a series of violent clashes that have been reported from vastly different perspectives across the media. "The (new) Cold War is actually a rivalry of competing values," Lai says, framing the current US-China trade war as a standoff of between democracy and authoritarianism. As the city watched the Tiananmen crackdown in horror, Giordano began producing T-shirts with pro-student slogans.


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