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Title details for The Troublemaker by Mark L. Clifford - Wait list

The Troublemaker

How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic

by Mark L. Clifford
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The "extraordinary life story" (Publishers Weekly) of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist fighting for freedom of speech who became China's most famous political prisoner.
Jimmy Lai escaped mainland China when he was twelve years old, at the height of a famine that killed tens of millions. In Hong Kong, he hustled and often slept overnight on a table in a clothing factory where he did odd jobs. At twenty-one, he was running a factory. By his mid-twenties, he owned one and was supplying sweaters and shirts to some of the biggest brands in the United States, from Polo to The Limited. His ideas about retail led him to create Giordano in 1981, and with it "fast fashion." A restless entrepreneur, as Giordano prepared to go public, he was thinking about a dining concept that would disrupt Hong Kong's fast-food industry. But then came Tiananmen Square democracy protest and the massacre of 1989.

His reaction to the violence was to enter the media industry to push China toward more freedoms. He started a magazine, Next, to advocate for democracy in Hong Kong. Then, just two years before the city was to return to Chinese control, he founded the Apple Daily newspaper. Its mix of bold graphics, gossip, local news, and opposition to the Chinese Communist Party was an immediate hit. For more than two decades, Lai used Apple and Next as part of a personal push for democracy—in weekly columns, at rallies and marches, and, memorably, sitting in front of a tent during the 2014 Occupy Central movement.

Lai took his activism abroad, traveling frequently to Washington. China reacted with fury in 2019 when he met with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A draconian new security law came into effect in Hong Kong in mid-2020, effectively making human rights advocacy and free speech a crime and censorship a fact. Lai was arrested and held without bail before being convicted on trumped-up charges. At the end of 2023, a lengthy national security trial, that could see him jailed for life, alleged "collusion with foreign forces" and printing seditious materials. China's most famous political prisoner has been held in solitary confinement since December 2020, while his supporters and family continue the fight to have him freed. "A sympathetic and inspiring biography" (The Wall Street Journal) and "a genuinely gripping yarn" (The New York Times), The Troublemaker is his story.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 3, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781668027714

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781668027714
      • File size: 94495 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      October 15, 2024
      Former editor-in-chief of both the Hong Kong Standard and the South China Morning Post, Clifford, who has a PhD in Hong Kong history, charts Jimmy Lai's unlikely but extraordinary life. Lai arrived from China young and penniless, rose to become manager of a garment factory, then parlayed his Hong Kong stock-market investments to buy his own operation, which he transformed into powerhouse clothier Giordano. Lai would go on to create two wildly popular publications--Apple Daily and the weekly Next--that would not only speak truth to the power of the Chinese Communist Party but would also inspire Hong Kong's massive but ultimately quashed protests against the CCP's abrogation of civil rights agreed upon in Hong Kong's Basic Law. Clifford, a former board member of Lai's media company, delivers a true profile in courage, Lai having the wherewithal to avoid prison--where he languishes today in solitary confinement--but choosing instead to stand up for human rights in Hong Kong, describing it as "a way to uphold the dignity of Hong Kong people."

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 28, 2024
      An extraordinary life story—from rags to riches to political prisoner—sheds light on Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy in this rousing biography. Journalist Clifford (Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World) recaps the life of businessman Jimmy Lai, whose boyhood in 1950s China imbued him with a lasting hatred of communism before he fled at the age of 12 to live with family in Hong Kong, where he built a garment-manufacturing and retail empire by way of hard work, business acumen, personal charisma, and shady panache (“Women, whiskey and weed” was his formula for making buyers receptive, Clifford reports). In the 1990s, Lai swerved into publishing with a weekly magazine, Next, and a newspaper, Apple Daily; they featured business news, scandal-sheet muckraking, racy pictures, salacious gossip—Apple Daily ran reviews of prostitutes—and columns in which Lai vented his dislike of the communist government in Beijing. After China’s 1997 takeover of Hong Kong, Lai became a stalwart of the city’s pro-democracy movement, bankrolling dissident groups; he was arrested on national secruity charges in 2020 and has been in prison ever since. Clifford, who was on the board of directors of Lai’s company, paints an appealing portrait of a colorful, ebullient figure full of charm and moxie who in prison becomes near-saintly, enduring persecution with patient humility. It’s a spirited profile in defiance.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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