The Cost of Courage: Mark L. Clifford on the Life of Jimmy Lai

This week, Roger welcomes Mark L. Clifford, the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation and author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic,” which was released in December of 2024.

They discuss the remarkable life story of Jimmy Lai, a Chinese refugee who built a successful business empire in Hong Kong before becoming an outspoken pro-democracy activist. They cover Lai’s early hardships, his spiritual conversion to Catholicism, and his current imprisonment by the Chinese government under harsh conditions. Plus, how Clifford and the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation are actively advocating for Lai’s release and the preservation of democratic freedoms in Hong Kong.

Mark is a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, holds a PhD in history from the Univer-sity of Hong Kong, and lived in Asia from 1987 until 2021. Prior to that, he was executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council, the editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), publisher and editor-in-chief of The Standard (Hong Kong), held senior editori-al positions at BusinessWeek and the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong and Seoul, and is the recipient of numerous academic, book, and journalism awards.