Interview | Mark L. Clifford： Jimmy hasn't changed. Hong Kong has changed.
Note:THE TROUBLEMAKER: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic （Simon & Schuster,2024) by Mark L. Clifford came out this month. “An extraordinary life story——from rags to riches to political prisoner——sheds light on Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy in this rousing biography.” In the interview, Boston Review of Books asked the author why Jimmy Lai went from being a successful businessman to a prisoner. Mark L. Clifford replied: Jimmy hasn't changed. Hong Kong has changed.
MARK L. CLIFFORD is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, the former executive director of the Asia Business Council, and a former board member at Next Digital. He is editorial chair of the Asian Review of Books, and served as editor in chief of both English-language papers in Hong Kong, The Standard and the South China Morning Post. An honors history graduate of UC Berkeley and a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, he holds a Ph.D. in Hong Kong history from the University of Hong Kong.
Mark L. Clifford at JF bookstore，Dec.6, 2024
Q: Jimmy Lai is a successful businessman. Can his business success be said to be achieved by Hong Kong? What special factors in Hong Kong do you think have made his business successful?
A:Jimmy Lai’s success was only possible in a place like Hong Kong, one that rewarded upstart entrepreneurs, people who knew how to hustle, people who were smart, creative, flexible, and gave customers what they wanted.
Jimmy came to Hong Kong as a stowaway at the age of 12. He left a China that was being ravaged by hunger, during the spectacularly misnamed Great Leap Forward. It was an ill- conceived Maoist idea to catch up with the West but instead it resulted in the deaths of as many as 45 million Chinese from famine, the greatest manmade famine in world history.
When Jimmy arrived in Hong Kong the freedom he wanted was the freedom to eat and to earn his way in the world. He often spoke of waking up that first morning in Hong Kong and smelling the congee, the doughy buns, and dim sum and knowing that he had arrived in some sort of promised land.
He went from sleeping in a factory to owning a factory in just 15 years. The freedom from hunger and the freedom to work soon became the freedom to start his own business.
He found freedom in so many forms in Hong Kong. He embraced this search for political freedom, especially after the Tiananmen killings of 1989. He embraced media freedom, starting a magazine and then a newspaper and innovating again and again with different technologies, different ways of collecting news, different ways of distributing news. He went from print to video and had grand ambitions for a television project in Taiwan but was thwarted by an entrenched local political and business interests.
The Hong Kong Jimmy Lai found was a Hong Kong that rewarded hustle, that had perhaps the lightest-touch capable government anywhere in the world. It had low taxes, low regulation, and its people celebrated successful entrepreneurs. It was a British colony and its people did not enjoy political freedom but they enjoyed what Jimmy always calls western values, above all, the rule of law.
Jimmy probably would have succeeded anywhere, at least anywhere that had a measure of freedom and embraced economic entrepreneurialism and success, but he exemplified what was best about the Hong Kong of that era.
He was the father of fast fashion. Japan's Tadashi Yanai came To Hong Kong to learn from Jimmy when he was starting Uniqlo, a company that's gone on to become the global leader in affordable fashion. Jimmy didn't regret not accepting Yanai's offer to invest in the startup but he did rue his decision not to take Giordano, the retailer he started, to the United States. He spent a lot of time in the US, especially in New York, because of his involvement with the textile and fashion industry, and he would have relished the chance to compete in the U.S., one of the world's largest and most competitive markets. But Hong Kong was his home and it was in Hong Kong that he made his fortune.
Q: Now Jimmy Lai is in prison and seems to have become an enemy of the country. What has changed that has turned him from a successful person in Hong Kong into a prisoner?
A:Jimmy hasn't changed. Hong Kong has changed. China has changed. Under general secretary Xi Jinping, dissent has been crushed. Hong Kong has been transformed from an open, global city, to a repressive place that cannot tolerate a free press, indeed, a place that cannot tolerate dissent of any kind. People are put in jail for performing glory to Hong Kong, the unofficial anthem of the protest movement, or for not looking reverent enough when the Chinese national anthem is played or for wearing a t-shirt authorities don't like Jimmy hasn't changed -- he still believes in freedom, freedom from hunger, freedom to work, freedom to start his own business, freedom to speak out as he wishes, freedom to practice journalism, and freedom to practice his faith. All these freedoms were promised to the people of Hong Kong by the Chinese Communist party before it took over the British colony in 1997. These promises have been broken. Jimmy hasn't changed. Perhaps China has changed. It certainly hasn't kept its promises.
Q:On November 20, Jimmy Lai testified in court for the first time, denying "Hong Kong independence" and believing that he is innocent. What are the "charges" for the Chinese government to arrest Jimmy Lai? What do you think of these“ charges”?
A:Jimmy's national security law trial has been going on for over one year, with 113 court days through the time the court recessed for holidays at the end of 2024.
The government has charged Jimmy with collusion with foreign forces, an offence under the national security law that could see him jailed for life. He's also been charged with sedition. The prosecution’s case is laughable. All it's proved is that Jimmy Lai has been guilty of practicing journalism. He's been outspoken in his criticism of the government in Hong Kong and in Beijing. Criticism of this sort is protected under the Basic Law, the mini-constitution promulgated by China, a document that guarantees Hong Kong's freedoms and way of life will be preserved for 50 years after the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong.
Jimmy has never advocated for independence and he has always been a strong proponent of non-violence. Indeed, young activists often criticized Jimmy and others of his generation for having accomplished so little during the runup to the end of British rule and the first two decades of Chinese rule. It's ironic that he's seen as some sort of mastermind, the imagined ‘Black Hand’ that the Communist Party seems to need in order to make sense of the strong opposition by millions of Hong Kongers to its increasingly repressive rule. Jimmy's guilty of nothing other than believing in freedom and being outspoken about that belief, often using his media platform
Q: Jimmy Lai said that his newspaper represents the freedom cherished by the people of this city. In Hong Kong, do you know many people like Jimmy Lai?（Hongkang 47 ） Can Jimmy Lai's arrest be seen as a sign of Hong Kong's loss of freedom?
A:Jimmy Lai is, of course, the best known political prisoner in Hong Kong. But he is hardly the only one. Over the past five years, Hong Kong has imprisoned more than 1900 people on political charges. About 40% of the people in Hong Kong jails now are being held without bail on political charges. Another 7000 have been arrested but no formal charges have been filed, although they are often unable to hang to travel freely while these charges are hanging over them. Many, many people have suffered as a result of the Chinese crackdown. Besides those in prison and those outside who are enduring judicial processes, We also need to think of their families, their friends, and their coworkers -- all are caught up in this sweeping whirlwind of repression.
Scores of people were arrested in raids 4 years ago, on January 6, 2021. The trial of those arrested then – and mostly held without bail in jail in the meantime -- the so-called Hong Kong 47, recently came to an end. All but two of the defendants were convicted. The Hong Kong 45 were sentenced to a total of almost 250 years.
So, yes, Jimmy lies arrest is a sign of Hong Kong's loss of freedom. He's the most high-profile target of the communist authorities but he's not the only one in his city where 6 out of 10 people have always voted for the pro democracy camp, from the first territory wide Legco elections in 1991 until the final free elections, the District Council elections of November 2019. Let's remember those millions of pro-democracy supporters in Hong Kong
Q：President-elect Trump said in a podcast interview that he would "100 percent" facilitate Jimmy Lai's release and that “he’ll be easy to get out.” Do you think Trump will fulfill his promise? What is the delicate position of Hong Kong in Sino-US relations?
A：All of us who work on Hong Kong democracy issues were delighted to hear President Trump's strong support for Jimmy Lai and the confidence with which he believes he can strike a deal to free this 77-year-old political prisoner. President-elect Trump has chosen some very strong people to work on foreign policy issues notably his nominations of Marco Rubio for Secretary of State and Mike Waltz for national security adviser. Both of them have strong records of advocating for human rights in US foreign policy and strong records vis-à-vis China. So, yes, I'm confident that President Trump will be able to get Jimmy Lai out of prison – and sooner rather than later.
Hong Kong plays an important role in China's relations with the world, especially Sino-US relations. There are many tens of thousands of Americans living in Hong Kong and a substantial amount of U.S. investment. Historically, Hong Kong has worked closely with the United States on a variety of issues.
However, now that Hong Kong's promised “high degree of autonomy,” under the 1984 Sino British declaration (an international treaty) and the1990 Basic Law (the territory’s mini-constitution), has all but disappeared, it's important that US policymakers take a hard headed look at what we can do about China's broken promises in Hong Kong.
It's vital to understand the way in which Hong Kong is emerging as a national security threat, notably its development as the key node in the smuggling of technology that's fueling the Russian war in Ukraine. Hong Kong has also emerged as a significant spot for smuggled technology used by Iran, as well as money laundering for countries including North Korea and Myanmar. So there are real national security implications in Hong Kong's move to repression.
More generally, it's important for the world to keep standing up for Hong Kong because weakness there would simply encourage Xi Jinping to move more quickly on Taiwan. He needs to understand that there are consequences for his broken promises
