Transcript - Izzit.org

JIMMY LAI: I really like to create things. I got a rich friend of mine, who was mypartner; whose father can sign a personal guarantee to get some money from the bank.So that’s, that’s works out, and then that’s how I build the factory, and then I went intothe retailing business.NARRATOR: In 1981, he founded a clothing chain, which he named “Giordano” afteran Italian restaurant in the United States. The company quickly expanded from HongKong into mainland China. Within a decade, there were over two- hundred “Giordano”stores worth hundreds of millions of dollars.Jimmy Lai had made it…in one of the most competitive clothing markets in the world.And then, suddenly, everything changed.The young, incredibly successful entrepreneur became emotionally involved with thepro-democracy demonstrators under brutal attack by their government in TiananmenSquare. It was 1989.JIMMY LAI: When I first noticed what happened in Tiananmen, I was very moved. Ialways trying to run away from China since the time that I escaped from it. AnythingChina represent is something that I want to forget. I want to be keeping as long adistance from it as possible, at least emotionally. It’s something becoming verydisgusting for me.Actually, I didn’t feel anything about China until Tiananmen Square happened. All of asudden, it’s like my mother was calling in the darkness of the night. And my heart openedup. It’s like going back to the warmth of your mother. I was very excited. I wanted toget involved. So I gave money, I gave t-shirts. I do a lot of things. I had banners in myshop; you know…“Ask Deng Xiaoping resign.” And printed those Tiananmen Squareheroes t-shirts, and sold it at a very cheap price. I was doing a lot of things. I gotinvolved and I was very excited, and that’s why I went into the media business.I asked myself, you know, “I’ve made enough money. If I just go on making money…itdoesn’t mean anything to me.” But if I go into the media business, then I deliverinformation, which is choice, and choice is freedom. You know, I was thrilled by theidea you know, that I could be part of the institution that is delivering freedom to asociety like China. Of course, that…which was a misconception. I thought China afterthe June fourth massacre would be opened up to the world and to freedom for its people.It hasn’t yet.NARRATOR: Hong Kong media avoided criticism of the Communist leadership. Butnot Jimmy Lai. He refused to play it safe and publicly criticized Premier Li Peng for hisrole in the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It was a fateful decision.JIMMY LAI: I wrote a letter, an open letter to Li Peng and said some harsh things abouthim. We had shops in China and we were frightened that you know…we, you know that,if I still owned the company, they’re going to close down the shops in China. So, the one5