A former clothing magnet, Jimmy Lai is a businessman is estimated to be worth more than $1bn (Approx. Rs 7000 Crore). He founded Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper in 1995 — two years before Hong Kong was handed over from British to Chinese control.
Modelled visually on USA Today, the paper caused a minor revolution in the city’s media landscape, sparking a price war and drastically changing how rivals operated as they struggled to keep up with Lai’s flashy tabloid sensibilities.
While focusing on celebrity gossip and other tabloid fare, since the handover the paper has emerged as one of the fiercest critics of the local government and Beijing. It has openly supported the pro-democracy movement and anti-government protests, printing flyers and posters in its pages that people can cut out and take to marches.
This drove the 71-year-old Lai to a place of prominence within the opposition movement, and made him a figure of loathing for pro-Beijing politicians and media in the city.
Though his media influence has arguably waned in recent years, along with that of the traditional pro-democracy parties, his profile has if anything grown, courtesy of a campaign by Chinese state media to paint him as one of a “gang of four” behind anti-government protests which broke out last year.
Lai’s closeness to right-wing politicians in the United States — he met with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-National Security Adviser John Bolton in July last year — has been used by Chinese state media to paint the entire protest movement, along with Apple Daily and similar media, as US-controlled.
With inputs from CNN
Discussion about this post