The forced closure of Apple Daily is the clearest sign yet of China’s exasperation with democracy in Hong Kong. Last August the paper’s newsroom was raided by about 200 police and its owner, Jimmy Lai was arrested on suspicion of colluding with foreign powers. Last week 500 police entered the premises and detained senior executives on similar charges. Prior to the raids, police had warned local media that critical opinions were being scrutinised for potentially endangering national security and that vocal dissent could lead to arrest and prosecution.
This is the first time that China’s controversial national security law has been used to directly muzzle journalists. (Lai’s assets were frozen last year.) It quickly led to the paper’s closure. After the raids Apple Daily successfully doubled its print run and its final edition sold 1 million copies (more than 12 times its normal circulation). That should give a censor pause, for what the crackdown actually produced is the opposite of what Beijing intended. Instead of intimidating critics, it has turned a racy tabloid into a symbol of resistance to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) creeping authoritarianism in Hong Kong.
The silencing of Apple Daily is a pointless act of self-harm. Foreign businesses will note the ease with which their assets can be frozen, and for the rest of the world Beijing’s hypersensitivity to criticism, is now a well-established fact. Given the lack of trust in state media, how will outsiders ever believe official assessments of China’s economic prospects when the perils of dissent are so clear? How can Hong Kong retain its customary advantages as a financial hub if ideas can no longer flow freely and criticism and debate are potential crimes?
The international community must do more than pay lip service to the death of democracy in Hong Kong. Last year, China became the world’s leader in foreign direct investment, overtaking the United States. Its crackdown in Hong Kong shows what PRC will soon expect elsewhere. To date China has received little criticism for its widespread imprisonment and indoctrination of Uighurs in Xinjiang, but those abuses have taken place in a fairly inaccessible part of the mainland. If it can enact anti-democratic measures in Hong Kong, in full view of the world, it will soon tighten its grip on Taiwan, Tibet and elsewhere.
On Thursday, as Apple Daily’s final edition was published, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said: “Press freedom is not an excuse [for] impunity, and whoever disrupts Hong Kong has no extrajudicial privileges.” The government’s deafness to the irony in that statement is suggestive of the CCP’s wider misunderstanding of Hong Kong. For what has actually been disrupted in the city is democracy, transparency and the rule of law.
