This is John Batson, conversation with the author, Mark Clifford, his new book, The Troublemaker,

the story of Jimmy Lai, who's now on trial pretty much for the rest of his life in China.

This is the background, where he came from, poverty in China, red China, and became a billionaire.

And then, as Mark explains, he knew exactly what would happen to him when he went up against the regime in Beijing as early as the early 1990s.

Here's Mark Clifford to explain the troublemaker.

No, he knew what he was doing. As far back as 1994, he had come under pressure from the Chinese

because of an attack he wrote on the Chinese, the premier at the time, Le Pong, who was regarded

as the butcher of Beijing for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen killings. And Chinese authorities

responded by closing the Giordano store in Beijing on spurious grounds.

They figured Jimmy would back off on the attacks. Instead, he doubled down. He sold his stake in

Giordano, pocketed at a couple hundred million dollars, plowed that into Apple Daily and started the

newspaper. So he knew what he was up against. The month

of the handover, I saw him on a stage and a large crowd, and he started crying because he said,

I'm going to jail. So he knew that the day would come. If he kept pushing, if he kept being,

and these are his words, the troublemaker, he was going to pay a price.

And we can talk later about why and, you know, he decided to do that.

But he knew that he was dealing with some very dangerous, very thuggish people.

You mentioned 2003.

This.