This is the recent interview with Nick Gillespie.

I'm Billy Binion, guest hosting for Nick.

Our guest this week is Mark Clifford,

former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post,

whose recent book, The Troublemaker, chronicles the life of Jimmy Lai,

a man who escaped mainland communist China to Hong Kong as a child

and went on to become a self-made billionaire.

But now, at age 77,

Lai is a political prisoner, currently on trial in China for his unwavering criticism of the government,

particularly as it relates to a pro-democracy publication he founded called Apple Daily. Clifford

and I talked about Lai's humble beginnings, his cinematic escape to

freedom, his fearless pro-democracy activism, his life in prison where he's been held in solitary

confinement, and the importance of safeguarding free expression around the world. And now to the

Reason interview.

Mark Clifford, thank you for talking to Reason.

Great to be here.

So I'm just going to start pretty broad.

Why do you think people should know Jimmy Lai's name?

Well, he's a genuinely brave, courageous person, one of the most important political prisoners in the world.

But beyond that, he's got a historical

significance in the sense that nobody in 75 years of Chinese Communist Party rule has stood up to the

party as effectively as he has. And so he's become a symbol of resistance in Hong Kong and beyond.

...