Lai Chee Ying
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- This is a Chinese name; the family name is 黎 (Li)
Lai Chee Ying (Chinese: 黎智英; Cantonese IPA: [lɐɪ11 tsɪ33 jɪŋ55], Jyutping: lai4 zi3 jing1; Mandarin Pinyin: Lǐ Zhìyīng, born in 1948 in Guangzhou, Guangdong with family roots in Shunde, Guangdong), English name Jimmy Lai, is the founder of Next Media, a Hong Kong publisher best known for Apple Daily. Born in Guangzhou, Guangdong, a poverty-stricken Lai came to Hong Kong during the Chinese Civil War. He became relatively wealthy, after founding the Giordano clothes chain.
After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 he founded Next Magazine. He has been a controversial critic of the People's Republic of China government. In a 1994 newspaper column, he told Premier of the PRC Li Peng to "drop dead," and called the Communist Party of China, "a monopoly that charges a premium for lousy service". As a result, his publications are mostly banned in the rest of the People's Republic of China, causing him to leave Giordano in order to save its business in mainland China. The hostility the PRC has towards Lai has further increased his publicity, if not popularity.
Lai is best known for introducing reader-centric philosophy and paparazzi into the newspaper business in Hong Kong. The best selling magazine Next Magazine and the newspaper Apple Daily, contain both racy material and academic articles, which attract a wide range of readers and amazingly, many of whom are also critics. In 2000, Lai moved to Taiwan to oversee the startup operations for Next Media's Taiwan editions, which have also had a great impact on the Taiwanese media. It now runs the most popular newspaper (Apple Daily Taiwan) and most popular magazine (Next Magazine Taiwan) on the island.
During the late 1990s, he started the Internet-based grocery and electronics home delivery service, adMart, which incurred large losses and failed.
Lai now lives in Hong Kong.
