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Jimmy Lai: A Journey of Resilience and the Fight for Hong Kong's Freedom

• Michele McAloon • Season 3 • Episode 110

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Michele McAloon:

Hi, I hope everyone had a great New Year's, good Christmas tide and, coming into 2025, being well-rested and ready to read. 2025 is going to be a big year with so many new changes, so we will see what happens, but I hope you stick with Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word. You can find out more about me, Michele McAloon at bookclubs. com my webpage, and if you are out there, if you are an author, author or you've read a great book and you want to hear an interview with the author, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I can be found again through my website and even through my different podcasts. So I wish everyone a happy 2025 and a great reading year. God bless, thank you.

Michele McAloon:

Happy New Year. It's Michele McAloon with Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word, and we're starting off the new year with a bang. We're here with Mark L Clifford. He is the author of the Troublemaker how Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, hong Kong's Greatest Dissident and China's Most Feared Critic. It is a book published by Free Press, which I believe Mark is an imprint of Simon Schuster. Is that correct?

Mark L. Clifford:

That's absolutely correct and thanks, michelle, great to be here with you.

Michele McAloon:

I'm actually delighted Mark Clifford has written a really interesting biography. It is not a long form biography, it is a short form biography. It reads very well, very quickly, and it's a biography about the story of Jimmy Lai, and Jimmy Lai I think of him, kind of some of those Russian nesting dolls. He is a story within a story within a story. Tell us a little bit about your story with Jimmy Lai and how you came to be associated with him.

Mark L. Clifford:

Sure Well, thanks, michelle. I moved to Hong Kong in 1992. I was a journalist for the Far Eastern Economic Review and I was looking around for interesting business people in Hong Kong and beyond and a friend of mine suggested that I see this garment guy, jimmy Lai, who started out making sweaters and then set up his own retail chain, was basically the father of fast fashion and then decided to get into media. As you say, he's kind of a Russian nesting doll. There's layer on layer on layer and he had just started a magazine and he was thinking of starting a newspaper. And Jimmy was nice enough to invite me over to his house for lunch, which was pretty unusual that a CEO would invite a humble reporter over. And then he proceeded to cook me lunch an incredible Chinese stir-fried with vegetables and shrimp and fried rice in a wok.

Mark L. Clifford:

He had a pet bear in his background then and peacocks and a little kind of. He was kind of making the transition from crazy rich Asian with the pet bear and the Rolls Royce to what he became, which was a pro-democracy publisher. And, yes, so I got to know him. That was 1993. So it's a little over 30 years ago and we stayed in touch, saw each other several times a year at least, and in 2018, I went on the board of directors of the company, known then as Next Digital, and it published the Apple Daily newspaper and Next magazine in Hong Kong and in Taiwan and had well became, you know, out of nothing, became one of the largest, if not the largest and most important independent Chinese media outlet in the world, with, at its peak, about 4,000 employees employees.

Mark L. Clifford:

He's in jail and solitary confinement, and I haven't been able to be in touch with him in the last four years, partly because of some of our earlier work and his connections with foreigners, especially Americans, most of whom you know, much senior to me, people like Vice President Mike Pence, secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national Security Advisor John Bolton obviously former from the first Trump administration and Jimmy's on trial. He's been held in solitary confinement for four years. He's on trial essentially of colluding with foreigners, and he and I did quite a lot of work together, particularly in the months before he was sent to jail.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, Now it's interesting that one of the first things you brought out was food. You kind of weave that through your biography, but food is important and food kind of goes back to his very early history and he really was born into a very tumultuous time in China and he winds up into Hong Kong. Tell us a little bit about that adventure.

Mark L. Clifford:

Sure. He was born two years before the 1949 Maoist communist takeover in China to a wealthy family, but one that was ripped apart by the Maoist revolution. So the family went from some wealth, with his older half-siblings having gone off to private schools in Guangzhou in southern China. His grandfather was reputed to be the first owner of a Rolls Royce in Guangdong province, southern China, just across the border from Hong Kong. Families ripped apart.

Mark L. Clifford:

Father ends up going to Hong Kong, the mother is sent off to labor camp. She's paraded around the dunce's cap, she has to walk on her knees and bow to the jeering crowds, and Jimmy and his twin sister are left at the age of six, having to fend for themselves, while the mom's off at a labor camp comes home on weekends and Jimmy hits the streets. He never finishes primary school, he's just scrambling to find enough food to eat. If he could get a field mouse that he could grill, he thought that was a big delicacy. I mean, this was a time of hunger. It was a time of the great leap forward, the spectacularly misnamed famine that killed something like 45 million people in China. Think of that, 45 million people.

Mark L. Clifford:

Here's this little kid 6, 8, 10, 12 years old. Finally, at the age of 12, his mother says okay, try to get to Hong Kong, you can escape to Hong Kong. And he got a one-way permit, legally left China to go to Macau, the Portuguese colony, across the Pearl River Delta, from Hong Kong, enters Hong Kong as a stowaway on a smuggling boat, a people smuggling boat and spends his first night in a factory His mother's sister is the first one and he wakes up the next day and he smells rice, he smells congee, that rice porridge, and it's just wonderful fragrant smell. And for him that was freedom and he went from hunger to, obviously, to great wealth eventually. But that first morning in Hong Kong, when there was just food around, he could work to fill his belly, he could work to make money, work legally, and he just he has a lifelong obsession with food. I mean, he loves good food and so, yes, it was fitting that he cooked that meal for me the first time that we met.

Michele McAloon:

Absolutely, and it's sort of a really bitter irony that his mother was a victim of the CCP, of the Chinese Communist Party, and now here her son is a victim of the Chinese Communist Party. Jimmy Lai's story is very much linked to Hong Kong and the history and story of Hong Kong and then the eventual leaving of the British from Hong Kong. Can you kind of sketch to us a little bit about not the whole history of Hong Kong, but what the Hong Kong that Jimmy Lai landed in to the Hong Kong that now imprisons Jimmy Lai?

Mark L. Clifford:

Yeah, michelle, I think you really hit the nail on the head. I mean, jimmy's story is the story of Hong Kong and his life kind of encapsulates the rise and then eventually the fall of Hong Kong. When he arrived in 1961, as I said, he was fleeing famine, the hunger of China, and he lands in this tiny British colony that's being swamped by refugees. Something like three million people came over a 20-year period or so after the communist revolution. As I said, his aunt and uncle were in a shack, too small for Jimmy to sleep on the floor. I mean, people were sleeping on streets. It was a place of shantytowns, of real poverty, but there were factories and there was a free market and there was desire to get ahead. People knew what they'd escaped from. About half of Hong Kong's population were refugees from China.

Mark L. Clifford:

So Jimmy worked hard. He worked in a factory. A few years later, I think about seven years later, he was managing a factory. 15 years after he arrived a little less than 15 years after he arrived he owned a factory. He bought a bankrupt sweater factory with a couple of partners. Within a few years it was the largest sweater maker in Hong Kong, if not in Asia. He was selling to places like JCPenney, even the Limited, and to big US companies. Then he starts this retail, this fast fashion company fast fashion company, in fact, uniqlo, the fast fashion giant. The founder of Uniqlo came down to learn from Jimmy about how to run fast fashion.

Mark L. Clifford:

Then he got involved in politics after the 1989 killings in Beijing, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and started these magazines and pushed along with Hong Kong people for more democracy at a time when Britain left in 1997 after 156 years of colonial rule and China came in promising that all of Hong Kong's freedoms would remain intact and in fact would be extended, and that the open society that we knew in Hong Kong would have genuine democracy, which it did not have under the British colonialists.

Mark L. Clifford:

And Jimmy took the Chinese at their word. He's really a man who loves China, who's a true Chinese patriot. But the Chinese Communist Party ultimately couldn't stomach what Jimmy and his journalists and the millions of Hong Kong people who came out in the streets asking for democracy. The Chinese Communist Party couldn't stomach what they were asking for. The Chinese Communist Party couldn't keep up to the promises it made to the people of Hong Kong and the international community. In the end they decided Jimmy was public enemy number one and they needed to slap him in jail, and that's what they did four years ago end of December, december 31st 2020, new Year's Eve. Years ago end of December, december 31st, 2020, new Year's Eve and he's been in solitary confinement most of that time and he's being tried on charges that could see him put away for the rest of his life.

Michele McAloon:

Before the breakup before 1997, I don't want to say the breakup, but the departure of the British from Hong Kong. How different are Hong Kongers, as they call them, from your mainland Chinese? That's also a little bit of part of this story and I didn't understand that. I had to do kind of a little research. But since you've lived there and you live there as a foreigner, maybe you can help explain that.

Mark L. Clifford:

Yeah, I mean, michelle. It's a fantastic question and it's interesting. I was up in Toronto earlier this month and was at a Hong Kong diaspora conference and somebody had a button on and said I'm not Chinese.

Mark L. Clifford:

Hong Kongers really do not like to think of themselves as Chinese. They actually speak a different language than the main language in the mainland. It's almost well. It's more different than Swedish and English, probably similar to German and English in terms of separateness. Obviously, you know, linguistically quite similar. The written language is similar but not identical.

Mark L. Clifford:

And so Hong Kong people really have a very separate identity and it's one that's been accentuated since 1997 with the coming of Chinese mainland rule. And yet in the quarter century, 25 or so years since the Chinese communists have come, hong Kongers have developed a much more separate identity. There are many ironies, of course. Most Hong Kong people came from the mainland, originally mostly from southern China, where they speak Cantonese which, as I said, is quite different from Mandarin.

Mark L. Clifford:

But this sense of separateness, of trying to have a Hong Kong identity, even Hong Kong autonomy, is something which drives Beijing and the communist rulers more or less insane. And although Hong Kong was promised by the Chinese a quote-unquote high degree of autonomy that would allow it to have its own civil service, its own currency, its own tax system, its own legal system. This still really really is something difficult for Beijing to swallow. I think the Beijing rulers somehow naively imagined that Hong Kong people would be so happy to throw off a century and a half of the yoke of British colonialism that they would, just, you know, fall over themselves, you know, to thank their new Chinese masters. And that was a sadly mistaken perception on the fact on the part of Beijing.

Michele McAloon:

The British talked about and they thought they were promised by the Chinese Communist Party one country, two systems. But that very quickly became actually not a reality. And it was kind of very fast that that became not a reality. What happened there and why? And that is actually what really did complicate Jimmy Lai's life- Absolutely.

Mark L. Clifford:

The British promised that they would hand Hong Kong back to China in 1997, at the expiration of a 99-year lease on most of the colony and tough negotiations, what sounded like a wonderful formula one country, two systems. Hong Kong would have a high degree of autonomy, it would have its own currency, its own tax system, its own common law, legal system. Life would go on as normal. In fact, the Chinese promised that there would be even more democracy, that Hong Kongers could elect their mayor, their city council, which they hadn't really been able to do in what we would regard as universal suffrage during the British period Founded great, but China just was proved unwilling to keep its hands off Hong Kong. I think Beijing made a number of mistakes and it really was very naive in thinking that Hong Kong people were going to just welcome Beijing with open arms. But most of these people, or their parents or their grandparents, had fled communist rule, and so they were really determined to fight for true democracy and to uphold the promise of this. One country, two systems, and unfortunately the two systems collided and the one country is what triumphed, and the Chinese Communist Party will do anything to maintain power, and they simply can't allow even the slightest bit of dissent. I mean, think about it If the Chinese had simply let Hong Kongers elect a pro-democracy mayor and city council, it would have been fine.

Mark L. Clifford:

I think China is a huge country 1.4 billion people. Little Hong Kong seven, seven and a half million people. What threat could it possibly pose to the mainland? Well, that's not how the leaders in Beijing saw it. They tried to push through more and more draconian legislation. In response, the Hong Kong people hit the streets. In 2019, we had repeated demonstrations of over a million people, sometimes two million people. Think of that two million people in a city of seven and a half million out on the streets. I mean, the city was overwhelmingly in favor of democracy. It was, in fact, the most sustained challenge to Chinese rule that the leaders had seen since they took power in 1949. I would argue, even more fundamental than the spring of democracy in 1989 in Beijing. That culminated, sadly, tragically, in the Tiananmen killings, which saw hundreds, maybe thousands of people killed. At least, we didn't see that in Hong Kong, but we've got a situation where we've had 1,900 political prisoners. Think of that 1,900 people who've been convicted and sent to prison in the last five years on political charges in a small city.

Michele McAloon:

That's amazing, and you know what A couple things here is. I mean you, no, I literally do. The other thing is and I was stunned by that number of 18 to 1900 people for political crimes what constitutes a political crime now in Hong Kong? I found that very interesting.

Mark L. Clifford:

Well, almost anything wearing a T-shirt they don't like. There's a guy that's about to go on charge because he turned his back when the national anthem was being played the Chinese national anthem and maybe he didn't stand up or looked respectful enough. I mean it's insane, michelle. It is really down to an Orwellian kind of thought control. And then, of course, in Jimmy Lai's case, he's facing a life sentence for collusion with foreigners and I don't know, was that the live stream events I did with him? I don't think so, but they keep mentioning them in court. Was it his meeting with Mike Pence when he was vice president? I don't know. I mean, hong Kong leaders will meet Mike Pence. Mike Pence is in fact going to Hong Kong this month to speak. Is everybody he's speaking with colluding with him? I mean, the law is whatever they want it to mean.

Mark L. Clifford:

China promised that Hong Kongers would have the right to jury trials, just as they could go and be convicted or found innocent by a jury of their peers during the British period. That's all gone with a national security law. So Jimmy Lai and others under this, the hundreds of others who've been tried or faced charges under the national security law, don't have the right to have a jury trial. Instead they are tried by judges who are from a secret panel of national security law judges, judges that have been approved and vetted by the Chinese Communist Party. So you know, we don't have any law or any justice. I mentioned Orwell. It's kind of like George Orwell's 1984 meets Franz Kafka meets Alice in Wonderland. I mean it's kind of quite absurd that somebody with a T-shirt or they're not looking respectful for the national anthem is slapped in jail.

Michele McAloon:

Jimmy Lai is a sweater manufacturer and actually that part of the story is really interesting because I never realized how sweaters were actually manufactured. You do a really good job of portraying his life, but also portraying how he worked through the manufacturing and some of the challenges, and there's a lot of stuff that I learned. I've probably and most Americans have probably worn a Jimmy Lai sweater a delimited JCPenney's whoever sells sweaters out there. But he's not content just to make sweaters. He takes a big leap and goes into I believe it's Next, it's a weekly magazine, right? How did he do that and what was the motivation for going into this? Because if he had just stayed a sweater manufacturer and a rich billionaire and I'm sure Hong Kong has its share of billionaires he would probably be living fat, dumb and happy somewhere eating whatever he wanted to eat, right. But he makes a transition and that transition, ultimately, is what gets him in trouble.

Mark L. Clifford:

Absolutely so. He's a serial entrepreneur, as we've discussed. He started a sweater manufacturing company, then he started a retail clothing chain and then he was actually looking at Chinese fast food. Getting back to the food theme, he thought that Chinese fast food wasn't good, wasn't consistent, was too expensive, etc. And so he was going to try to bring the same techniques he brought to fast fashion to fast food. It was a Chinese version of what Chipotle did with Mexican food.

Mark L. Clifford:

About five years after Jimmy was toying with the idea of it in Hong Kong. But then came the spring of 1989, the democracy protests in Beijing. Jimmy was a huge supporter. He made t-shirts at Giordano, the retail clothing company, and featured student leaders on the t-shirts and sold them, sent the money up to Beijing, sent tents and other supplies up to Beijing to support the protesters. Jimmy had seen the economic reforms that started in China in the 1980s and of course, as an entrepreneur he thought it was terrific. He started manufacturing in China, along with other Hong Kong companies, you know, very early into China.

Mark L. Clifford:

And then came the killing on June 3rd, June 4th 1989, where we saw hundreds, maybe thousands of some of China's best young leaders, students, workers, others just mowed down and killed. And Jimmy was heartbroken. And again, this is what's so ironic, that he's being charged on sedition and collusion with foreigners, as if he's some kind of anti-China person. He's not. He's one of the most patriotic Chinese that you could ever imagine meeting. He doesn't like the Chinese Communist Party, and why shouldn't he have the right not to like the Chinese Communist Party? But when he saw what happened in 1989, and remember how different the media landscape was CNN had only started in the early 1980s and those June 4th killings were one of the first times we saw almost in real time globally historic, dramatic event unfolding and Jimmy said wow, china's great, we've got these economic reforms going on. Politically they're ossified, they're like dinosaurs. The Chinese Communist Party. If I as a media owner could just bring some transparency and people could see what's going on, then communism would disappear that much faster. China could grow that much more quickly. We'd see a political and social opening to accompany the economic one.

Mark L. Clifford:

So he figured setting up a magazine was the way to do it. Now you or I might say I don't know anything about magazines. How could I set that up? Could I set that up, jimmy, given the fact that he's kind of forged in the fire of the poverty and the craziness of the Maoist period. He'd already started two successful businesses. He has a self-confidence, a belief in himself and his abilities and a belief that he could create a business. That he just went ahead and people asked him about it and he said hey look, I read Fortune Time, the Economist, I can do a magazine. So I mean, it's kind of very naive in a way, but it ended up being a huge hit and he followed the magazine with a newspaper that was the most influential in Hong Kong and then later he went into Taiwan, after Taiwan became democratic and following the election of an opposition figure in 2000. So he built this amazingly powerful business that employed 4,000 people at its peak In a couple of decades. He built the most powerful independent Chinese media in the world.

Michele McAloon:

You know, it's really interesting From what you write. There was a book that changed his idea of reality and I just love this. And what is it? It was the Road to Serfdom by Hayek right. And he read this book and his friend gave it to him in New York, I believe and this absolutely changes him. I think the thesis of the book is about state production and how the state should never have control of private production. And he takes this book and he takes it to heart. Do you think that's what sensitized him to this democratic movement?

Mark L. Clifford:

Well, yeah, I mean it's so important that you mentioned that. I don't want to say he was naive, but he was. Look, he's self-taught, he's a primary school dropout. Think of that. The guy never finished primary school and he goes on to create a couple of successful companies. When he got that book it was the late 1970s, as you say.

Mark L. Clifford:

He was in New York. He was complaining about the communists one night at dinner. He spent a lot of time in New York being in the garment trade and had a lot of friends there, and he was complaining about the Chinese communist leadership. This was just a couple of years after Mao had died. And at the end of the dinner his host went to his bookshelf, pulled down Hayek's Road to Serfdom and said to Jimmy read this Basically, you'll learn something. You need to know what you're talking about and in the sense of you have all this lived life experience. But Hayek will help you put it in a broader, even a theoretical, perspective.

Mark L. Clifford:

Now, Jimmy's a man of action, he's a businessman, he's not a theorist, but like many people who didn't finish school, he's hungry for knowledge. He's always reading. In prison now he reads as much as he can. He's a Catholic convert and reads theology intensely, and so he just devoured Hayek and, as you indicated, he went on to Popper. And the road to serfdom is very important because it essentially says if the state starts controlling production in the economy, it ends up by controlling people and it ends up destroying freedom. It isn't just limited to business and the economy, but it gets into our very souls. Limited to business and the economy, but it gets into our very souls. And Jimmy obviously took that to heart. And I think Hayek is a very, very appropriate book for anybody who's Chinese, who's trying to, or anybody who's trying to grapple with the reality of the Chinese Communist Party and its control not only over the economy but over people's lives, even their bodies and their thoughts.

Michele McAloon:

Yeah, absolutely. I was stunned when I read that. I love stories about books that change people's lives. It maybe didn't change his life, but it crystallized what he was thinking. I think that's often what a good book does. He's not satisfied with just doing the weekly magazine, he goes to Apple Daily and this, from how you describe it and from what I could find on the internet this just explodes. This is like a Chinese firecracker actually.

Mark L. Clifford:

That's a great analogy. In the book I quote somebody who's saying that Next Magazine was kind of like the scalpel. It would have deep investigative reporting and Apple was the bulldozer just kind of plow over but actually firecracker might be better it just yeah, you're right, it exploded. It came out two years almost to the day before the Chinese rule was coming to Hong Kong, before the People's Liberation Army literally marched into Hong Kong. It wasn't by any means a dry pro-democracy paper, it was a lively.

Mark L. Clifford:

Jimmy was the first one to introduce color printing to newspapers. Think about this the guy's never run a newspaper in his life. He goes out and he gets some of the best printing presses in the world. He buys really high quality paper, great ink for the color register. I mean, I have to say the printing in Apple Daily is superior to anything you'll see in American newspaper, new York Times, wall Street Journal, usa Today. Even today they don't hold a candle to the printing quality of what Jimmy did. But it wasn't just the ink, it was the layout, the graphics, very bold.

Mark L. Clifford:

We talked before about how separate Cantonese is. Jimmy and his team were some of the first to use the Cantonese vernacular which was just spoken and put it into writing, using characters, using homonyms to use the Chinese language and Cantonese language in a very, very different way, which again created this separateness with the mainland. Mainlanders could read most Hong Kong newspapers, even if they couldn't speak or understand Cantonese, but they couldn't read Apple Daily. It was filled with slang, with kind of made-up Chinese characters, and it did everything. It did sex sport scandal, horse racing was huge, but so were its reviews of prostitutes, bordellos. Strangely well, not strangely pimping is illegal in Hong Kong, but one person, brothels are not, and they would do almost like restaurant reviews of these prostitutes.

Mark L. Clifford:

It wasn't always nice. I mean, they were on the edge and sometimes beyond. They did fantastic economic and business and stock market coverage and they always had a very, very, very strong pro-democracy slant. And in 2003, they rallied people. It was the biggest demonstration other than the 1989 Tiananmen ones in Hong Kong history. They got a half a million people out in the streets. All of a sudden, beijing really stood up and they said wow, this guy is dangerous, he's bad news. He was bad enough that he was bad malignance in his weekly columns, but now it turns out he can mobilize people more effectively than we, the state, the Communist Party, the Hong Kong government can.

Michele McAloon:

Absolutely amazing. I mean, I found myself wishing that I spoke Cantonese so I could read one of the papers the way you described it. He had another very seminal event and I believe it happened in 1997. He had married a Catholic and he becomes a Catholic. He is a Catholic convert and I am a canon lawyer for the Roman Catholic Church. So I would be remiss if we didn't talk about this, because he associates his Catholicism in many ways with individual freedom and democracy and I imagine that is very true for a Chinese patriot, as you say.

Mark L. Clifford:

It's a remarkable story and I'm not Catholic and so I perhaps can't talk about it quite as thoroughly or sensitively as you, but I've been in awe amazed at his spiritual journey, so let's just kind of wind back. He's this street kid, you know, hustling black market activities. At the age of six, eight, comes to Hong Kong, finds freedom, the freedom of food that we talked about at first, the freedom to work, the freedom to start his own business, the freedom to get rich, the freedom to agitate for democracy. And then he finds freedom through God, through God's love and through his wife's love, teresa, and converts a week after the handover to China in 1997. I mean, as Teresa told me, he knew trouble was coming and wanted some help, the help and comfort of a higher power. And I wouldn't say again, as a non-believer, perhaps he was talking differently to different people, but as somebody who knew him over the years, it didn't strike me as particularly religious, even after his conversion, and in fact I thought he'd been Catholic all along. I learned a lot researching this book. As time went on, his faith became more and more important and in the last four years, while he's been in prison, I think it's that and Teresa, teresa's love and support have really kept him going.

Mark L. Clifford:

So right now, as far as we know, he essentially leaves the life of well his godfather, bill McGurn, describes as leading the life of a Benedictine monk. He's in solitary confinement. He doesn't have a clock, he doesn't have any windows, no natural daylight, he doesn't even control when his lights go on. He doesn't control when he eats, let alone what he eats. But to the extent that I mean he can't choose when he's going to be physically free. Only the Chinese Communist Party, only really only Xi Jinping, can decide that. But what he can do, and what he's consciously tried to do, is to live as a free man.

Mark L. Clifford:

He spends his days drawing religious art. He's actually quite talented artist. He prays, he reads theology, as I've mentioned. He gets two to four books a month and they're pretty hardcore on theology. I don't think Pope Francis is among those he's reading, but he tends to go towards a more conservative bent. And he has to do prison labor, forced labor. He makes envelopes 600 envelopes a week, the last I heard at about one US cent an envelope and he goes to court. When he has to go to court, often in shackles, usually in a cage inside a big armored car with police dogs, hundreds of police around, a very performative gesture on the part of authorities for a 77-year-old man who's always professed nonviolence and was determined to stay in Hong Kong to face his fate, to undergo the suffering that he needed to go for himself and for Hong Kong people and for freedom. So, michelle, I mean it's a remarkable journey of freedom.

Michele McAloon:

Jimmy Lai's trial. So how long has he been in jail now for?

Mark L. Clifford:

Jimmy was put into jail on New Year's Eve four years ago, so at the end of 2020.

Michele McAloon:

And what was the original charge?

Mark L. Clifford:

That's a good question. It seems to have been related to a sublease where, out of this huge newspaper operation he had, he leased the equivalent of about half of one size of a tennis court to a private company which he paid rent for his own family office, and the government owned the underlying land and they said this violated the lease. This is so technical and arcane and so minor. And the government owned the underlying land and they said this violated the lease. This is so technical and arcane and so minor. It would be kind of like if I were renting an apartment and said no pets and I brought a cat in. It's never been anything more than a fine or a minor offense in Hong Kong. If anything, somehow he got five years and nine months in prison for it. It's a long answer. It just again shows the absolute absurdity and the lengths to which authorities will go to throw this guy in jail and to keep him in jail.

Michele McAloon:

So a trial started again, from what I understand, back in November, right this past November.

Mark L. Clifford:

Well, there have been several. He also got 14 months for a couple of nonviolent civil disobedience. So he went to a June 4th Tiananmen Square prayer vigil. He got out of his car this was during COVID, so there was not permission to hold a public rally he got out of his car, he lit a candle, he said a prayer and he got back in his car. He didn't speak to anyone. For that. He was found guilty of inciting a riot.

Mark L. Clifford:

So there have been numerous trials. The latest started just over a year ago, december 2023. It's been going on over a year and it relates to the national security law charges. This is the big kahuna. This is a minimum of 10 years maximum of life. He's 77 years old. 10 years is pretty much equivalent to a life sentence for him and he's being charged with two counts of collusion with foreigners and one of sedition, and the prosecution's case is I'd call it a kangaroo court, but I think that would be unfair to kangaroos. I mean, it's just, it's a joke. It's like he was in some conversations with me or he met Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo. You know well before there was a national security law in those meetings. So it's not really clear what he's guilty of, except practicing journalism and advocating for freedom guilty of except practicing journalism and advocating for freedom.

Michele McAloon:

Wow, I just saw an interview with Sebastian Lai, his son, and his son is pleading now with the world to try to let him out. And the irony of this is he's, from what I understand, he's a British citizen. He holds a British passport. I know there's been some outspokenness from the United States, even some from the British Parliament. I think there was something recently that happened in December, where they're trying to drum Paris. He could have gone back to New York. But you know what? I think the world doesn't understand self-sacrifice and from what I get from your book, from the interviews, from everything, is that he really believes in the cause of freedom, and we see this again with Navalny. We see this with Natan Sharansky, who opened your book of people that are willing to lay down their lives for the freedom of others. And you know something that sounds like he's following the commands of the Catholic faith.

Mark L. Clifford:

No, absolutely. Maybe he would have done it. He's such a stubborn guy and he believes so much in what's right that he might have done it anyway. But the point is he did convert to Catholicism. That is a huge buttress His faith, the freedom that he finds in suffering.

Mark L. Clifford:

Quite frankly not that he's trying to be a martyr by any means, but he, as you said, he could have left. He's got houses in Kyoto, taipei, apartments in Paris and London, big hotel holdings in Canada. As you say, he's a British citizen. He's never had a Chinese passport. He could have left and yet, and many people asked him to leave and he told them I would rather be hanging from a lamppost in central Hong Kong, the business district, hanging dead from a lamppost in Central, than to give the communists the satisfaction of saying I ran away.

Mark L. Clifford:

He's a guy who decided to make his stand. Of course he doesn't want to suffer no one wants to suffer but he felt that if he could make an example through his example, if he could help bring freedom and democracy in Hong Kong, that it would be worth it. And he, you know. Again, I think his Catholic faith helps him understand that all suffering is meaningful and it's not his choice as to when he'll physically be free, but he is, and he talked with Nathan Sharansky about this a lot and I was in one of those conversations. You know that he can live as a free man within a prison cell and I think he may be freer than he's ever been.

Mark L. Clifford:

We need to get him out. He needs to be back with his family. There's absolutely no reason that the Chinese should hold him, and I would argue even in their self-interest. They need to get out of the box that they're in in Hong Kong If they really want Hong Kong to take its place again on the world stage as an international business center. They can't hold one political prisoner, let alone 1,900 or so, so they should start. It's a very, very low cost, potentially high reward move if the Chinese would let Jimmy and other political prisoners nonviolent political prisoners out of jail.

Michele McAloon:

Absolutely, absolutely. There's one last comment. I am an obedient Catholic but have been extremely disappointed with what the Vatican has done in its relationship to China and its silence on Jimmy Lai. I think they could carry a lot of water if they did make a statement, but they have refused to do that. And I know you know, one of Trump's campaign promises was he's going to get Jimmy Lai out of jail. That boy says more than his prayers. But you know what? I hope he makes that a reality. I really do.

Mark L. Clifford:

Yeah, I do too. I mean, he made that comment to a podcast with Hugh Hewitt a couple of weeks after Jimmy's son, Sebastian Lai, who just mentioned, was on, and I I mean it's shameful that a church that embodies freedom would be so silent in the face of such oppression.

Michele McAloon:

I agree with you and I cannot offer any defense for that, so I do. I agree with you. If people want to learn more about Jimmy Lai or are more interested in his cause, where can they go?

Mark L. Clifford:

Well, there's a great website. It's independent, it has nothing to do with me. It's called Support Jimmy Lai. It has updates on the ongoing trial and on him. My day job. I'm president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. We work for the freedom of all Hong Kong political prisoners, but Jimmy is probably the most prominent, so he's one that we give a lot of attention to. And, of course, there's my book, the Troublemaker, and I'm accessible either my personal website, new administrations around the world with, I think, renewed focus on the struggle between freedom and a small gesture for them by freeing Jimmy and others, but a huge, huge move for those individuals and their families and their loved ones.

Michele McAloon:

Absolutely, absolutely Well. Mark Clifford, it has really been great talking to you, talking to you about this. This really is a great biography, folks, because it does it reads very fast. It's the Troublemaker how Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, hong Kong's Greatest Dissident and China's Most Feared Critic, and it really is a story of courage, a story of sacrifice. He is a man to emulate, to model. I loved how he was as willing to fail as he was to succeed and he learned from his failure. So it's also, I mean, a great business book to read too, a very good motivational book too. So, mr Clifford, thank you very much for your time.

Mark L. Clifford:

Thanks so much for your interest. You're a great reader and a very skilled questioner. I think you really hit the heart of this remarkable man. So thanks again. Thank you, very skilled questioner. I think you really hit the heart of this remarkable man.

Michele McAloon:

So thanks again, thank you.