He was twelve years old when he watched his family lose everything. The Communist Party had taken over China in 1949. There was no safety net. No way back.
So he did what desperate children do. He stowed away on a fishing boat. He didn’t know where he was going. He just knew he had to get out.
That boat ride changed his life. He arrived in Hong Kong. From there, he built a retail empire. He became a multimillionaire. Then a billionaire.
Most people would have stopped there. They would have bought the yachts. The private islands. The silence.
But 1989 happened.
Hundreds of protesters died in Tiananmen Square. The world watched. Jimmy Lai didn’t look away. The wealth he had built became the fuel for his activism. He didn’t just watch history. He tried to change it.
The deaths of hundreds of protesters in Tiananmen Square spurred him to activism.
This wasn’t about money anymore. It was about conscience. The boy who hid on a fishing boat never forgot what it meant to have nothing. And he decided to use everything he had gained to fight for what was right.
It’s a story about survival. And then. About what you do when you survive.
