For many of us who pay a great deal of attention to and love Hong Kong, the earth-shattering protests of first the Umbrella Revolution in 2014 and then the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in 2019 still seem like yesterday. Yet, memory is fading as reality moved swiftly beyond what we previously imaged possible. In just a little over a decade, Beijing has reined in Hong Kong’s native political movements through a series of overt, brutal crackdowns that transformed the very fabric of social, political, and economic life of Hong Kong, which once almost functioned as an independent city-state within the sovereign borders of the PRC. Families broken, dreams lost, visions shattered. Say what you will about the lessons of the protests, but one thing is clear: the Hong Kong we know is gone.
Much of what we do here at Peking Hotel feels nostalgic, reminiscent. And it is, for good reasons. It is worth remembering the past so we maintain a moral, rational, and truthful compass for the future. Oblivion to the past is just as dangerous as overdosing on nostalgia; the art is in a balanced moderation. And in the story of Hong Kong specifically, there are few figures greater than Jimmy Lai, the media tycoon who owned Apple Daily and staunchly spearheaded Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Last month, Jimmy Lai was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sedition and collusion with foreign forces under the infamous national security law. The merciless treatment of Jimmy Lai exposes a Hong Kong government that is closely aligned with Beijing’s political agenda, lacks confidence in its own democratic legitimacy, and projects fears through enacting violence upon those who dare to speak up.
Mark Clifford is Jimmy Lai’s biographer. He has known Jimmy for decades, regularly visited Jimmy’s dinner parties, and sat on the board of Next Digital, the parent company of Apple Daily. Mark Clifford is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He lived in Asia from 1987 until 2021, and was the editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post, and publisher and editor-in-chief of The Standard, both Hong Kong newspapers. He was a director of Next Digital, publisher of Jimmy Lai’s pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, when the government shut it down in 2021. I can think of few better suited than Mark to speak to his memory of Hong Kong and Jimmy Lai as a colleague, tycoon, activist, and friend.
So on the occasion of Jimmy Lai’s sentencing, we are fortunate to have Mark Clifford sharing with us his years of living dangerously in Hong Kong, the handover and transition of Hong Kong from the British to the Chinese, and Jimmy Lai the freedom-fighter. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Hope you enjoy.
Leo
For quick navigation to the specific sections:
A decorated career in journalism in Hong Kong under British and PRC rule
After graduating university you worked as a journalist in the U.S. After a fellowship at Columbia University, Far Eastern Economic Review hired you to be their correspondent in South Korea. In 1992, they brought you to Hong Kong. What was the energy of Hong Kong like in the mid-’90s?
From the night I arrived, I’ve just always loved Hong Kong. I was an undergraduate in Berkeley, loved the Bay Area, loved hiking, biking, being outdoors, the ocean. And I love the intensity of an urban environment, like Manhattan. To me, Hong Kong brings both together.
The energy, the hustle, the drive, and the dynamism — it’s the most amazing place that I’ve ever seen. Part of it, I realized later, was driven by insecurity and the fact that wages in Hong Kong are low. There isn’t much of a social safety net.
Also, you were on the edge. I came five years almost to the day until the handover. It was three years after Tiananmen, five to go. The clock was ticking.
When did you first meet Jimmy Lai?
I met Jimmy Lai a year later as part of my duties as a correspondent, profiling him and [clothing brand] Giordano — this crazy guy who started a magazine right after Tiananmen and had his eyes on opening up a newspaper right before the handover.
Where were you on the day of the handover?
I went to the old Tamar basin, where they had a stage. Chris Patten and Prince Charles both gave quite incredible speeches. It was moving. Britannia, the ship with Patton and Charles, went down the harbor. People were cheering the whole way — not cheering like they wanted them to be gone, but cheering in support.
Jimmy started crying and said that he expected he’d go to jail after the communist takeover.
Then I took a bus up to the Shenzhen border. We watched the PLA troops come in, many of them in open back trucks, standing at attention with incredible rain coming down. It was dawn when I came back. New PRC flags were all over the city. When I saw those flags it really hit me. This is now part of China.
What were you feeling at the time? Hopeful? Pessimistic? Neutral?
All of the above. Everybody hoped for the best. I was quite pro-engagement, having seen the democratic changes in Korea and in Taiwan, and despite the horrors of the Tiananmen killings, wanting to believe that the same thing could happen with China.
But on the other hand, I had seen Jimmy Lai a few weeks earlier at an event at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Hong Kong. Jimmy broke down and started crying and said that he expected he’d go to jail after the communist takeover. Here’s a guy who had a lot more direct experience with communism than me. It was sobering for me.
You arrived in Hong Kong as a reporter for Far Eastern Economic Review, moved to Businessweek, and then you were editor-in-chief for two Hong Kong newspapers. Could you talk about those experiences?
That was a huge change for me. Beginning of 2003, I took over as publisher and editor-in-chief at The Standard, which was the number two English-language paper. I had been in Hong Kong for just over 10 years and had always been part of the foreign media. When you’re working in a Hong Kong publication and you’re just dealing with Hong Kong people, there’s a richness and a texture to the city.
It’s one of the dangers of media ownership by somebody who has a lot of other business interests. They’ll sacrifice their editorial independence because of concern about their other interests.
How was the relationship between the Hong Kong press and Beijing at the time?
English-language press is easier. The Hong Kong Standard was part of the Sing Tao family, owned by a guy named Charles Ho, who came out of a Hong Kong tobacco family.
Charles and the team at Sing Tao were in close contact with the people in Beijing, or with the Beijing representatives in Hong Kong. And they were often seen as a government mouthpiece. They were much more likely to criticize the Hong Kong government than to criticize anything with Beijing. I was mostly spared that.
Charles died in 2025. He was good to me, but I felt sorry for his cynicism. He knew how bad the Chinese communists were and yet he cynically played along because he liked the power, the glory, the money.
What does it mean to play along? Was the newspaper receiving political lines to take?
As far as I understand, certainly. I don’t know exactly the mechanism, but somebody was giving them a line that they wanted to take. They consistently reflected government and Beijing views.
But English-speaking publications didn’t matter as much in Hong Kong after 1997, so they left us alone. We had a lot of freedom. We won a lot of awards. It was a scrappy, hard-hitting paper.
After I’d been there a couple of years, I met the Kuoks, the family that owned most of the South China Morning Post. They were looking for a new editor-in-chief. I talked to them and went across the street — across the harbor actually. The Kuoks were also pretty close to senior people in the administration at the time.
It’s one of the dangers of media ownership by somebody who has a lot of other business interests. They’ll sacrifice their editorial independence because of concern about their other interests. That was true with both the Kuoks and Charles.
When Jimmy was faced with pressure from the Chinese on his other main interest, Giordano, he sold his Giordano stake.
I don’t want to impugn their integrity by suggesting that there was a direct line between a particular story and a particular business interest. But, in general, they were reluctant to go as hard as a completely independent publication could, like Apple Daily and Jimmy Lai. When Jimmy was faced with pressure from the Chinese on his other main interest, Giordano, he sold his Giordano stake.
There wasn’t a lot of direct editorial interference. The Kuoks or Charles might make it clear that they weren’t so happy about something, but, so what? Sometimes I was told I shouldn’t have so-and-so as a columnist. But I had him as a columnist anyway, and that was that.
Of course, they didn’t renew my contract after a year either. This gets back to an encounter I had with Rafael Hui when he was chief secretary. I said that the press was particularly important until Hong Kong had universal suffrage, had full democracy. Rafael then told the Kuoks that I said that the SCMP would oppose the government until there was full democracy, which is just nonsense. That’s probably what cost me the non-renewal.
After leaving South China Morning Post, you left journalism and became the executive director at the Hong Kong Asia Business Council for 13 years. What led to that decision? That’s quite a different place to work.
I’d done what I could do in journalism. I didn’t want to leave Hong Kong. I thought this was an interesting opportunity to be on the other side of the fence. Along the way I did a couple of books, got my PhD, and got to interact with some of the most powerful, interesting people running some of the largest companies in Asia, if not the world.
The underlying, often unspoken reason behind the Asia Business Council was to try to knit together private sector ties. I remember the first meeting in New Delhi. During a coffee break, one of the members said to another member, “You own an airline? I own an airline too. We should talk.” It was these high-level private sector conversations.
Beijing vs. Hong Kong, a Greek Tragedy
Your time in Hong Kong overlapped with many political events. Not just the handover, but also major demonstrations, such as the massive 2003 protest about Article 23 — Beijing’s first attempt to impose natural security legislation. Could you talk about those? How did you see and experience them at the time?
There’s the backdrop of China’s entry into the WTO. And then of course, before Article 23, we had SARS and the government’s inept handling of that in early 2003. After SARS and after the 2003 demonstration, China took a much more active hand in Hong Kong.
It’s like a honeymoon period for the first eight years. Everybody’s on good behavior, and then tempers start fraying.
You have to also see the broader international context of China opening up, getting the Olympics. People felt positive. If you look at polls, Hong Kongers felt more “Chinese.” That peaked in 2008. And then the sense of Hong Kong identity became stronger and the sense of being Chinese receded. We had a lot of cross currents at that point.
Where were you in 2003 when the march happened?
I was still working for Businessweek and I was at the JW Marriott hotel. It was a brutally hot day, over 90 degrees. And in air-conditioned comfort drinking iced tea, we watched these hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people go by. That was a signal moment. You knew something had changed in Hong Kong that day.
The government withdraws Article 23, [Hong Kong chief executive] Tung Chee-hwa steps down. China seemed to have a light hand and yet still be responding to aspirations. People still felt optimistic that the Basic Law would be respected. There have been promises that there’d be a full universal suffrage for the 2007 LegCo elections. And then the run up to the Olympics, the WTO, there was lots of good momentum and the bad stuff hadn’t kicked in yet.
It’s like a honeymoon period for the first eight years. Everybody’s on good behavior, and then tempers start fraying. Both sides start mistrusting each other. Although I naively thought otherwise, in retrospect, the CCP demands control and subservience, and they somehow thought they could get that from Hong Kong. That was not in the cards. It was a Greek tragedy of both sides being fated to clash.
Fast forward to 2014, Umbrella Movement — you already left journalism, entered the Business Council. Where were you during those weeks, months of Occupy Central, and what did you see?
I started my PhD program in August 2014. Occupy started a couple weeks later.
That first night, that Sunday in September, I was in the library. I took a long walk from HKU up over the peak and down to my apartment in mid-levels. I got a text from a friend in London. I didn’t know what it was about, but she was outraged at what the Hong Kong police had done to the demonstrators. I went down there that evening and saw a lot of the skirmishing and smelled the tear gas. I remember it very, very vividly. And obviously, it was in Central for 79 days. It was incredible.
It’s historically so unique. What major city allows a 79-day occupation? You give the Hong Kong authorities and the Beijing authorities low marks for actually knowing how to negotiate a compromise and a way forward. Because I think we still could have found one then. But you have to give them high marks for diffusing the situation without violence.
How did the Business Council react to the Umbrella Movement in 2014?
I don’t remember talking with them that much about it. I know that Ronnie Chan, who was the founder of the Business Council, was a big supporter of CY Leung. He was somebody who just detested Jimmy Lai. I wouldn’t expect him to be positive.
Some people were frustrated that the Hong Kong tycoons never pushed back. If the tycoons are not with the people, then there’s no chance of succeeding. What do you make of this interpretation of events?
Your characterization is correct, but I don’t think there was any serious expectation that the business community would join with people.
There’s a long history of the business community, both Chinese and British, opposing democracy in Hong Kong. I happen to know that as a student of Hong Kong history. Did the student protesters know that or not know that and have unrealistic expectations? I don’t know.
If Beijing had decided something different, then we could have had something different. And it would have been unusual for the business community to go the other way. The closest you can see is Cathay. Cathay had tens of thousands of workers, and some of them were involved with the movement. The Cathay management was not going to punish them. For that, the Cathay management got punished and the CEO was fired. That person at least was British, so he could leave. But I don’t think any Hong Kong Chinese businessman was going to risk all their wealth and assets in a pro-democracy movement.
Jimmy Lai, the businessman who fought for freedom
Jimmy Lai is a critical figure in that regard, because he was the only one at his level who stood up for the rights, autonomy, dignity, liberty, and democracy of Hong Kong. Could you talk about how you got to know and understand him, and how your interest in him grew over time?
I met Jimmy in 1993. I profiled him for the Far Eastern Economic Review. It was the first of several profiles I wrote of him. I knew him pretty well, but I wasn’t part of his inner circle. I’d see him a couple times a year. He’d invite people out on his boat — journalists, priests, visiting scholars, an eclectic group of people. His dinner parties were the same.
In ‘93, he had founded Next Magazine, but he hadn’t founded Apple Daily yet. He described to me what he was going to do with this newspaper. The internet was starting. China was coming to take over Hong Kong. It seemed crazy, but he approached it as a business person and as somebody who loved freedom. Six out of 10 Hong Kongers had voted for the pro-democracy candidates in the 1991 election, which was the first territory-wide election ever after 150 years of British rule. He knew there was a market.
Apple Daily had lots of lively stories — sensationalism, sex, sin — mixed with a real commitment to free markets and free people.
He went through every single newspaper, who owned them, what their line was, and how they were already starting to make adjustments for the coming of CCP rule. He realized he had a golden business opportunity. And he wasn’t just feeding people spinach and hard politics. He was the first to start printing color in Hong Kong. And Apple Daily had lots of lively stories — sensationalism, sex, sin — mixed with a real commitment to free markets and free people.
Jimmy was open ideologically. Reporters said there was less editorial kind of oversight and control than anywhere they ever worked. The only thing was, if he thought you were writing socialist, leftist economic stuff, you were out. But you could write just about anything politically.
From the beginning, it was a powerful, important paper. Apple did a lot of investigative work. One of the things that helped fuel the anger in 2003 was the so-called Lexus-gate, with Antony Leung, the finance secretary, who bought himself a new Lexus immediately before he raised the taxes on cars. Apple broke that. Apple broke something about a legislator who hadn’t declared interests, and he went to jail for that.
I don’t know of another paper in the world that’s had that broad popular appeal, and also had a lot of serious stuff. It also, more importantly, broke up the cozy relationship that existed between the press and government and business people. Apple was a no-holds-barred kind of place, and that ethos was set from the top.
You later joined the board of Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital. What prompted you to join the board?
I went on the board in 2018. I went on with Gordon Crovitz, who had been my boss at the Far Eastern Economic Review. He had been publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
Why you? You were with the Business Council, which is full of his archenemies in the business world.
I don’t know, but it wasn’t just me. A lot of us had different politics, but we just love the sense of freedom that Hong Kong exemplified. Jimmy was a pole of that.
Crovitz and I had experience in media as a business. We clearly had affinities with Jimmy on whatever the pro-democracy, pro-free speech line was, but we knew media as a business. Next Digital needed that, especially as they were making the transition to getting digital revenue.
You joined at a pretty momentous time.
Yeah, but it didn’t seem like that at the time. 2018 seemed like it was a lull. Only in retrospect does it look momentous.
How Xi Jinping lost Hong Kong in 2019
Could you walk us through those months leading up to the summer of 2019, when the anti-extradition protests broke out?
It was a crazy time. In most places in Hong Kong, things were fine. But on the other hand, there’d be demonstrations in Central. I remember one time I was in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club having lunch and there was tear gas coming in. It was chaotic and violent in a way 2014 had not been.
It always seemed very David versus Goliath, but the marches were impressive. Some of them I marched in, some of them I just watched. But I don’t think I’ll ever in my life see crowds of this size. On August 18th, I wanted to catch the rally in Victoria Park. In an hour, I managed to get out of the subway station not more than maybe 100 feet. You could not move.
It was people power of the most beautiful sort.
I have to contrast the scenes that I would see at HKU and elsewhere, where there was a lot of physical damage. These huge marches were a cross section of Hong Kong people — people of all ages. People felt secure and safe enough to bring their young kids or their grandparents. The crowds were so peaceful. It was people power of the most beautiful sort.
And yet you had a government that never offered to negotiate. They just stonewalled. That drove people to frustration, despair, and ultimately to violence. I don’t support that. I know Jimmy Lai didn’t support it. But I think one can understand the slogan, “you taught us that peaceful protest doesn’t work.”
What clicked for you, such that you decided to join the demonstrations?
In 2003, I was still a journalist and felt bound by this need for neutrality. The extradition bill just pushed me too far. It had been 22 years since the handover, and China clearly was backpedaling on its promises. In 2017, the foreign ministry had declared that the Sino-British Declaration was of no practical relevance, a historical document. In other words, this was an international treaty that China was just going to rubbish. It clearly wasn’t interested in living up to the Basic Law. I’d spent most of my adult life in Hong Kong, and I was just fed up with it.
Peaceful protest is part of the Hong Kong tradition. I might as well get out there with a million other Hong Kongers and do what I could. At that point, my board [at the Business Council] knew that I was on the board of Jimmy Lai’s Next Digital. Even though I was an independent non-executive director, they could draw their conclusions about where my political sympathies lay, even if I did not make any secret of it. There are times when you need to make a stand.
In retrospect, the late November district council elections in 2019 — when, as usual, Beijing was out of touch with Hong Kong grassroots reality and they thought there was going to be a silent majority that was going to vote pro-Beijing; instead, you had this landslide victory with record turnout — at that point, Xi Jinping said, “We’ve lost Hong Kong.”
On August 10th, 2020, Apple Daily’s office was raided. Where were you that day? What communication did you have with Jimmy or his staff?
First, on February 28th, I was supposed to go have breakfast with him. I was getting in a taxi in the morning and I got a call from his secretary saying, “Mr. Lai can’t meet you today.” I was puzzled by this. There are some CEOs who are always late, or who cancel on things. Jimmy is always on time and he never cancels. Then I saw an email from him that he’d actually sent me 15 or 20 minutes earlier, saying, “I’m being arrested.”
That was pretty concerning. I saw him a week later. We had the breakfast, and everything was fine. But he was a bit taken aback. They had been civilized. They let him finish his exercises, take a shower, and come down. They held him a few hours, and then he was out.
August 10th was different. I was in Hong Kong, in my office. I was following it through news reports. I had no contact with him. We had an emergency board meeting. I was the only director in Hong Kong not in police custody — not a good feeling. It’s like, “Okay, I’m an American, I have no Chinese ancestry, so it’s unlikely they’re going to come after me, but still not a good sign.” They let Jimmy out late on Tuesday night. And then he was in the newsroom on Wednesday.
I left Hong Kong on October 27 that year. It was right after Asia Business Council had had one of its semiannual meetings. On an open call during this meeting Ronnie Chan implicitly threatened me with arrest under the National Security Law. That was not a good feeling either. I had bought my return ticket for early January. On December 3, Jimmy’s bail was revoked. He was put in jail.
When they revoked his bail, they quoted me as saying “Jimmy Lai is a symbol of Hong Kong resistance.”
My name was mentioned by the prosecutor. We had been doing these weekly live stream events that became an important part of the trial. We had everybody from Cardinal Zen to Chris Patten to [Israeli politician] Natan Sharansky to [American politician] Paul Wolfowitz on these programs. I was the moderator. Sometimes these things would have 200,000 people watching live, and they’d be reported in the newspaper. So there was some profile. That was probably what put me on the radar of the authorities. When they revoked his bail, they quoted me as saying “Jimmy Lai is a symbol of Hong Kong resistance,” which seems pretty factual and anodyne.
I decided to cancel my ticket. Honestly, I probably would have gone back, except they kept extending the [Covid] quarantine. Jimmy got out for a few days over Christmas, then they put him back in on December 31st. Then they had the big raid of what became the Hong Kong 47 on January 6th, 2021. That was a crazy day in history. It starts off with raids on 75 apartments in Hong Kong and ends with the storming of the Capitol by the MAGA people.
I and a few other people founded what became the Committee for Freedom and Hong Kong Foundation. The upshot was I never went back to Hong Kong, and just got involved in trying to do what we can for Jimmy, for the other six Apple Daily people who were in prison, and for the 600 or so Hong Kong political prisoners. It developed organically and unexpectedly. I’m so naive, I’d never dealt with a communist or Leninist party close-up like this before.
Later on, in May 2021, Jimmy’s shares were frozen. They tried to freeze some overseas bank accounts. In June, the director got a letter from John Lee saying that he suspected we’d broken the National Security Law, therefore he was freezing bank accounts of three of the key subsidiaries. We were out of business by the end of the month. June 24th was the last edition.
You left the Asia Business Council in January 2021. How did that happen?
I lost my job — or I offered to resign and it was accepted — because I knew that some of the members were uncomfortable with the fact that I was a director of Next Digital and that I’d been doing these live streams with Jimmy Lai.
Leaving Hong Kong as an accidental activist
You’ve written a biography of Jimmy Lai, titled The Troublemaker. What’s so special about Jimmy, in your opinion, that sets him apart? Is it the moral energy, the personal charisma? What is it?
He’s unique among dissidents that the CCP has dealt with. He has three things that they don’t like, and in some sense, don’t understand.
He’s rich, so he can hire great lawyers. He has many well-connected friends around the world. Jimmy put a huge amount of money into the movement. It came out in the trial. He spent more than 100 million U.S. dollars of his own money on the pro-democracy movement over the years. In that sense, I kind of see why the Chinese think he’s a black hand. He really put his money where his mouth was.
The CCP understands power and wealth. They understand the media. I don’t think they really understand principles.
Number two, a lot of his power is built around media, and I don’t need to tell you what the CCP thinks of media. It’s propaganda, and it should reflect the state line, and if it doesn’t, it definitely should not oppose it.
Number three, the power that comes from actually having principles and convictions. Jimmy was always a guy with a strong sense of right and wrong. He’s also fearless, and he’s by nature a troublemaker. That’s where the title comes from. That’s what he called himself. I said, “Why do you do this?” He said, “I don’t know, I’m a troublemaker, just kind of born that way.”
The CCP understands the power and the wealth part. They understand the media part. I don’t think they really understand principles. Maybe the first generation of revolutionaries would, but the people running China now, I don’t think they have any principles.
You call yourself the accidental activist. Are you surprised by the direction you’ve taken?
Well, yes and no. I’ve always been interested in politics. I went to Berkeley, so I also describe myself as a recovering leftist.
A recovering leftist wrestling with the Communist Party to save a billionaire?
A right-wing billionaire.
In the most capitalistic city in the world.
Yeah, so in that sense, I would not have predicted it. But it’s not totally out of character.
Are you still in touch with Apple Daily folks?
As a board member, it wasn’t like I knew hundreds of reporters. But yeah, I’m in touch with some people. There’s a huge amount of loyalty. There’s this incredible network. In Taiwan, they had a big reunion. A thousand people signed up.
The spirit of Hong Kong is worth fighting for.
At its peak, at the end of the 2000s, the whole organization had around 4,000 people. In 20 years, he’d gone from nothing, from being in the clothing business, to building the largest truly independent Chinese language media operation in the world.
You left Hong Kong, not really with the intention of never returning, but events caught up with you and made you some kind of a diaspora from Hong Kong. How has that new life looked for you?
It’s been a fantastic chapter. I have to say, although I call myself an accidental activist, it’s the most satisfying work that I’ve ever done. It’s for a place that I love so much, where I spent most of my adult life. The spirit of Hong Kong is worth fighting for. Hong Kong matters for the future of a liberal international order. If China’s allowed, with no resistance, to steamroll and destroy Hong Kong, it’s bad for everybody who likes freedom.
The intensity that people have for Hong Kong, you don’t want it to degenerate into wistful nostalgia. It’s still a lively culture. Because of technology, we have possibilities that, say, the Hungarian refugees after 1956 didn’t have. We’re able to coordinate with a relatively small number of people. On the other hand, a lot of my Chinese colleagues are running into transnational repression issues. It’s a tiny city, but the battle for it is being played out globally. It’s fascinating. And obviously, we’re going to win.
What is winning?
First, to get political prisoners out of jail and to start having a thaw in Hong Kong where people are able to at least wear a T-shirt that is anti-government. The ultimate victory, of course, is the end of the CCP and democracy in China. But that’s not our focus.
Recommended reads
Mark Clifford, 2025, The Troublemaker, Free Press
Mark Clifford, 2022, Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World, St. Martin's Press
Supachai Panitchpakdi and Mark Clifford, 2002, China and the WTO, Wiley
About us
The Peking Hotel podcast and newsletter are digital publications in which Liu He interviews China specialists about their first-hand experiences and observations from decades past. The project grew out of Liu’s research at Hoover Institution collecting oral history of China experts living in the U.S. Their stories are a reminder of what China used to be and what it is capable of becoming.
We also have a Chinese-language Substack. We hope to publish more conversations like this one, so stay tuned!
Shoutout!
We would like to say thank-you to our supporters, especially to the following people who referred us to great many friends, colleagues and acquaintances:
Kudos to you, our network now has more awesome people like yourselves. Please keep spreading the word for us :) I appreciate it.
