Jimmy Lai

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Jimmy Lai bigraphy, stories - Activists

Jimmy Lai : biography

1948 –

Lai Chee-Ying, better known by his western name Jimmy Lai, is an entrepreneur. He founded Giordano, an Asia clothing retailer, and Next Media, a Hong Kong-listed media company and a Chinese-language media group.

Early life and escape from China

Born 1948 in an impoverished family in Canton, Kwangtung, China with family roots in nearby Shunde, Lai was educated to fifth grade level.

Smuggled to Hong Kong aboard a small boat at the age of 12, Lai worked as a child-laborer in a garment factory for a wage of $8 per month.

Taiwan publications

Lai launched Taiwan editions of Next Magazine in 2001 and Apple Daily in 2003, taking on heavily established rivals who made considerable effort to thwart him. Rival publishers pressed advertisers to boycott and distributors not to undertake home delivery. His Taiwan offices were vandalised on numerous occasions, but as the publications grew to have the largest readership in their category, the advertising boycotts ended.

In October 2006, Lai launched Sharp Daily (Shuang Bao in mandarin), a free daily newspaper targeting Taipei commuters. The company also launched Me! Magazine in Taiwan.

In building Taiwan’s most popular newspaper, Apple Daily, and magazine, Next Magazine, Lai’s racy publications have had a great impact on the island’s hitherto staid media culture.

Transition to publishing

Owing to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Lai became an advocate of democracy and critic of the People’s Republic of China government. He distributed Giordano T-shirts with portraits of student leaders and began publishing Next Magazine, which combined tabloid sensationalism with hard-hitting political and business reporting. He went on to found other magazines, including Sudden Weekly(忽然一週), Eat & Travel Weekly(飲食男女), Trading Express/Auto Express (交易通/搵車快線) and the youth-oriented Easy Finder (壹本便利).

In 1995, as the Hong Kong handover approached, Lai founded Apple Daily, a newspaper start-up that he financed with $100 million of his own money owing to investor fear of association with a critic of the Mainland China government. The newspaper’s circulation rose to 400,000 copies by 1997, which was the territory’s second largest among 60 other newspapers.

In 2006, Sudden Weekly and Next Magazine ranked first and second in circulation for Hong Kong’s magazine market while Apple Daily is the No. 2 newspaper in Hong Kong.

Lai encourages a company culture of transparency and creativity without hierarchy. Employees are encouraged to tackle challenges through trial and error while assuming responsibility for their actions and sharing in profits from successful ventures.

In a 1994 newspaper column, he told Premier of the PRC Li Peng to "drop dead," and called the Communist Party of China, "a monopoly that charges a premium for lousy service". As a result, most of his publications remain banned in mainland China. China’s government retaliated against Lai by starting a shut-down of Giordano shops, prompting him to sell out of the company he founded in order to save it.

Ahead of the record-breaking pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong of July 2003 that brought half a million people onto the streets, the cover of Next Magazine featured a photo-montage of the territory’s embattled chief executive, Tung Chee-Hwa taking a pie in the face. The magazine urged readers to take to the streets while Apple Daily distributed stickers calling for Tung to resign.

In addition to promoting democracy, Lai’s publication often ruffle feathers of fellow Hong Kong tycoons by exposing their personal foibles and relations with local government. Lai has frequently faced hostility from the many Beijing-backed tycoons, including attempts to force supplier boycotts of his companies and a lengthy battle to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that he sidestepped through a backdoor listing. Lai managed to list the company in 1999 by acquiring Paramount Publishing Group in October of that year.