[3][2] He studied at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, graduating from its Department of Foreign Languages, and then emigrated to California in 1987.
[2] There he lived in Walnut, California, with his wife Liu Ru Ying and daughter Jean.
[4] In the United States, in 1997 Ji co-founded and became chairman of Apex Digital, a Los Angeles electronics trading company.
[2] Changhong was China's largest television manufacturer, a supplier majority-owned by the company-town city of Mianyang and the province of Sichuan.
[2] On December 14, 2004, Changhong sued Apex in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleging breach of contract and citing the documents Ji had signed.
[2] Apex contested the suit, stating that Ji had been abducted and that the documents had been signed under coercion.
[2][3] Ji did not have a lawyer; Apex later argued that that raised questions as to whether the tape would have any value in American courts.
[2][3] On May 28, 2005, seven months after Ji was first detained, he was handed over to the Mianyang police for formal arrest on charges of "financial instrument fraud.
As a U.S. citizen he was not granted the same treatment by authorities as non-ethnically Chinese businessmen sharing the same nationality.
[12] At the time, Ji was one of a dozen United States businessmen who had been detained in China without due process in the past decade.