Jimmy Lai Won’t Back Down

At 3:30 a.m. on a chill January morning, Hong Kong media magnate Jimmy Lai was awakened by a housemaid. Police were at the door of his British-colonial-era mansion. “I thought they had come in the middle of the night to arrest me,” Lai, a former child sweatshop worker, says matter-of-factly later that day, sipping tea in a sitting room decorated with brilliantly colored paintings by Chinese-American artist Walasse Ting.

Lai’s assumption was hardly far-fetched, given his front-line role when pro-democracy protesters seized control of much of Hong Kong’s central business district for almost three months late last year. On this predawn visit, however, the cops had other matters in mind. Unbeknownst to the slumbering Lai, arsonists had attacked his home, hurling a Molotov cocktail that exploded spectacularly against the steel-barred front gate. Unfazed, Lai delegated the task of meeting police to an assistant, rolled over, and went back to sleep.