I'm John Batch from visiting with the author and publisher and editor Mark Clifford, whose new book is The Troublemaker,

how Jimmy Lai became a billionaire, Hong Kong's greatest dissident, and China's most fierce critic.

It's 1975. This is a moment when Jimmy says, I've worked enough. I know how to run a factory, let's buy one.

He's done well on the Chinese, on the Hong Kong stock market, which is now obligingly crashed,

as markets tend to do. But that's made purchasing a factory available to people with capital,

but not a whole lot. He has a partner, Lang Jirang, and they find what you'd have

to say with some creative thinking, a factory that they can turn into a copycat factory.

What is that, Mark? Yeah, well, he's hoping to, basically, he's hoping to steal customers from

his last business

and uh produce the same kind of fashions uh whether it's a sweater or a shirt he's mostly doing

nits uh sweaters uh as the previous place didn't really work out like that he couldn't it proved

harder to steal customers than he thought because the customers said hey the old place is good

we don't know if you can deliver we might give you some money and then you're gonna you're gonna make to steal customers than he thought because the customer said, hey, the old place is good.

We don't know if you can deliver. We might give you some money and then you're going to make shoddy sweaters for us and then where are we? So it was a real struggle for him in the first year

or so. And the struggle led to Jimmy's personality winning through.

Our emphasis here, this is not a man who spends a lot of time contemplating.

This is a man who likes to meet people and dine especially everywhere.

He will become a great gourmand, but right now he has to meet buyers.

Who are they, Mark?

And what is the miracle?

Yeah, they're coming from American retailers, above all.

The American retail market was just exploding in the 50s, 60s, and we're up to the 70s now, as you say.

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