Who is Jimmy Lai?published at 01:50 British Summer Time
Jimmy Lai was born in 1947 in Guangzhou, a city in southern China, to a wealthy family that lost everything when the communists took power two years later.
He was 12 years old when he fled his village in mainland China, arriving in Hong Kong as a stowaway on a fishing boat.
While working odd jobs and knitting in a small clothing shop, he taught himself English. He went from a menial role to eventually founding a multi-million dollar empire including the international clothing brand Giordano.
When China sent in tanks to crush pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, Lai began a new journey as a democracy activist, as well as an entrepreneur.
He wrote columns criticising the Tiananmen Square massacre and launched pro-democracy titles like Next Magazine and tabloid paper Apple Daily.
Many in Hong Kong hailed him as a defender of freedom though others in the mainland viewed him as a “traitor”.
