Jimmy Lai

Lai Chee-ying (Chinese: 黎智英; born 8 December 1947), also known as Jimmy Lai, is a Hong Kong businessman, politician, and political prisoner. He founded the clothing retailer Giordano, the media company Next Digital (formerly Next Media), and the newspaper Apple Daily. He is one of the main contributors to Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp, especially to the Democratic Party. A British citizen since 1994, he was imprisoned in 2020 and his business operations shuttered under pressure from the Chinese government.

A prominent critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Lai has faced intense political pressure throughout his career and endured acts of intimidation, including assaults and petrol bomb attacks. Despite these attempts to silence him, he remained committed to defending press freedom. Under his leadership, Apple Daily continued to openly criticize the Chinese government and became the most popular pro-democracy publication in the territory. Lai was ultimately arrested on 10 August 2020 under the new national security law, an action which prompted widespread criticism. He was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison, a penalty Human Rights Watch called "both cruel and profoundly unjust" and Reporters Without Borders called bogus. As of September 2025, Lai remained imprisoned in solitary confinement at Hong Kong's Stanley Prison although this was at his own request to be segregated from other inmates, for reasons of his own. Lai regarded his imprisonment as "the summit of his own life".