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by Guy Newey
Continued from Wednesday
Jimmy Lai’s determination to
see democracy in Hong Kong and China has not wavered since he began
printing t-shirts celebrating the Tiananmen protesters in 1989. Lai
tells Hong Kong correspondent Guy Newey how he made the journey from
child refugee to media baron, how the prodemocracy struggle is as
important as ever and that China is in grave danger if it does not
open up
“He is very market savvy and
has had a huge impact on the newspaper scene in Hong Kong and
Taiwan, and the papers are revolutionary in terms of the layout and
design,” said Yuen-ying Chan, director of Journalism and Media
Studies at Hong Kong University.
“The downside is that he pushes
commercialization to the extreme, and he is not shy in defending
that, saying it is what people want.”
Chan believes that although
Lai’s prodemocratic stance is beneficial in terms of attracting
readers, his titles often fail to scrutinize the city’s democratic
politicians, meaning it falls short of being a genuine watchdog.
Apple Daily is now Taiwan’s
biggest-selling newspaper—”it was so easy,” says Lai—but
Next’s offices were smashed up and he even received personal
physical threats, he suspects from people he may have exposed in his
paper.
“I went to a restaurant one
day, and somebody came to me. ‘Are you Jimmy Lai?’ I said yes.
They said, ‘Look, you better be careful. This is not like Hong
Kong. People will resolve their problems simply with a gun. Bang
bang and you are finished,’” he said.
Despite the move, and personal
attacks on his family, Lai still does not use bodyguards, a common
accessory in Hong Kong for people of his wealth and notoriety.
It is a choice borne both of his
pragmatism—”If someone wants to kill me, how many bodyguards
will be enough?”—but also his deep faith.
He converted to Catholicism ten
years ago (Lai recalls the exact date like it is his own birthday).
His conversation is peppered with Biblical references—alongside
less virtuous language—and his condemnation of opponents is dished
out with a preacher’s passion.
The roots of his religion stretch
back to his childhood.
“I had the faith when I was
five years old. When my mother was imprisoned, because we were young
at home with no adults, she was allowed at weekends to come back to
wash us, to feed us, just to clean the house, clean our clothing,
wash our hair, brush our teeth, all that,” he said.
“Every time she comes back we
were OK and every time she left we felt that something is protecting
us.
“We never had no problems. We
always had no money, but in the end we made it. I went out and
worked and maybe stole something and it worked. That induced a
belief in me that something is protecting us.
“That is why I was not afraid
when I was in the media, not afraid when people threatened to kill
me. Always felt that something was protecting me. That is part of my
instinct.”
One long-term employee said Lai
was “anything but normal” as a boss.
“He is extreme in both senses.
On one hand he is quite hands off and will not interfere even if he
disagrees with your piece,” said the journalist, who did not want
to be named.
“But on the other, he is very
involved in shaping the newspaper in a general sense, he sits in
editorial meetings, he is everywhere.”
The employee said Lai had
tempered his legendary “abusive language” in recent years, but
remained an inspiration for staff with his keen sense of what
ordinary readers want.
Despite his fortune Lai does not
make too many ostentatious shows of wealth. He has a yacht—named
“Free China”—but describes his family as his greatest luxury.
Lai now lives with his second
wife, Teresa—his first wife left, leaving Lai to bring up three
kids on his own. “I discovered fatherhood [then],” he says,
“because I would have been too busy unless my wife had run
away.”
He has had three more
children—his brood now ranges in age from seven months to 30 years
old. But his professional life remains focused on fighting for
democracy in Hong Kong.
Most recently, he was reportedly
a key player in former deputy leader of Hong Kong Anson Chan’s
decision to fight an upcoming by-election, a decision that could act
as a clarion call for the prodemocracy movement.
The city’s Basic Law, the
miniconstitution used to govern the city since its return to Chinese
rule from Britain in 1997, enshrines the move to universal suffrage,
but does not specify a timetable or system.
Currently only half of Hong
Kong’s 60 lawmakers are chosen directly by voters, with the other
half and the chief executive chosen by select business and
industrial interest groups, the vast majority loyal to Beijing.
Prodemocrats are pushing for full
universal suffrage for both the chief executive and legislators by
2012, but Beijing appears to want to delay the move.
“If you give Hong Kong
democracy, the world will look at China as a government that is
committed to its promise, committed to the rule of law,” Lai said.
“I think they will have to give
democracy within 10 years. But we have to fight for it. If we
don’t fight hard, our chief executive [Donald Tsang] will have no
excuse to go to China and fight for us. We have to empower him to do
something about it.”
--AFP
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