The Troublemaker

About this book

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 the 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 t…