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“The final edition of Hong Kong’s last remaining pro-democracy paper sold out in hours [last] Thursday… The newspaper said it was forced to cease operations after police froze $2.3 million of its assets, searched its office and arrested five top editors and executives last week, accusing them of foreign collusion to endanger national security.” AP News
Both sides criticize the Chinese government and call for the US to respond:
“This is the darkest moment yet for press freedom in the region. Its chilling effect, not only on the media, but even private discussion, is profound. But journalists anticipate a further crackdown… The public service broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong has seen programmes pulled and its head replaced by a career bureaucrat without media experience, while one of its producers was recently convicted of criminal conduct for accessing a public database while investigating police misconduct. A ‘fake news’ law is on the way. Police have gained new internet censorship powers and censors have been told to vet films for content that might infringe the national security law…
“Yet hundreds of well-wishers gathered at the Apple Daily building on its final night, and long queues formed at newsstands on Thursday to snap up its farewell edition. A million copies, more than 10 times its usual print run, were produced to meet demand. The spirit of resistance in Hong Kong is wounded but struggles on. How long it can survive, without the free flow of information, is another matter.”
Editorial Board, The Guardian
“Hong Kong’s freedom is being snuffed out. It is against our values and our interests to remain a bystander… The Biden administration recently banned the importation of solar panel material from a Chinese company accused of benefiting from slave labor in the Muslim-dominated province of Xinjiang. A similar step for Hong Kong would be to extend existing sanctions against a few Hong Kong individuals and firms much more broadly…
“U.S. leadership could also make Hong Kong’s political prisoners a key element in broader U.S.-China relations. American presidents regularly sought the release of prominent Soviet dissidents and tied improvement in relations to improvement in the conditions that dissidents faced within the Soviet Union. President Biden should demand the release of prominent pro-democracy figures such as entrepreneur Jimmy Lai as part of ongoing discussions with the Chinese and Hong Kong governments.”
Henry Olsen, Washington Post
“Perhaps one thing we could do is follow the example of Great Britain and set up some sort of expedited visa program that would allow residents of Hong Kong to emigrate to the United States on short notice. I’m sure most of them don’t want to surrender their homeland to the Chinese, but once you have a taste of freedom it’s very hard to give it up. Maybe they would come to enjoy living in [America] after they have time to adjust and become vocal critics of the governments in both Hong Kong and mainland China.”
Jazz Shaw, Hot Air
The representative for Apple Daily’s majority shareholder writes, “The lifeblood of any financial center is the rule of law and free flow of information. Advocating for democracy was only part of what Apple Daily filled its pages with. Our business pages were often described as a scandal sheet. Many of the corporate elites and tycoons despised the paper for our reporting on their activities — something companies and executives in China do not have to worry about. Yet when was exposure and reporting not a benefit to free and open financial markets?…
“China has a very different understanding of the relationship between business and the government than we have in the United States. Businesses are assumed to do what China wants, whether that means turning over technology or personal data. This makes the scrutiny and exposure provided by a free press all the more important to keeping Hong Kong a free and open financial market… Jimmy Lai often told us, ‘No free press, no free market.’ Those in the international business community who believe the closure of Apple Daily will have no impact on them are about to learn this lesson the hard way.”
Mark Simon, Washington Post
Other opinions below.
“John Lee, the Hong Kong secretary for security, invoked the National Security Law on his own to prohibit Mr. Lai from voting the 71% of Next Digital shares that he owns, denying him the rights inherent in shareholding on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. Mr. Lee then froze Next Digital’s bank accounts, announcing it would be a crime for the company to make financial transactions. He warned the company’s banks not to enable any transactions. The company could no longer access accounts with tens of millions of U.S. dollars to pay its bills or to accept payments for subscriptions and advertisements…
“The National Security Law empowers one official to make it a crime for a publicly traded company to operate, even when no one has been convicted or even charged with a crime… This story of what happened to Apple Daily is only partly about undermining the free press. It’s more broadly a warning of what can happen to any company operating in Hong Kong that the authorities claim committed some offense under the vague terms of the National Security Law.”
L. Gordon Crovitz and Mark L. Clifford, Wall Street Journal
“As the distinction between the judicial systems in Hong Kong and the mainland is overridden by Beijing, foreign and local Hong Kong companies will be vulnerable to mainland political and business pressures… Businesspeople may feel they can sidestep landmines and moral quandaries by indulging Beijing in the way Taiwan is described on an airline website, or by firing an employee for a tweet about Tibet. But these are examples of a much larger problem. Chinese Communist leaders’ perceptions of their interests are expanding, not contracting, to include not only new geographic areas, like the South China Sea and northeast India but also the party’s definition of human rights and national security…
“China used to be seen as the Wild West—a frontier for enterprising people willing to take the greatest risks to reap the greatest rewards. But the risks have grown exponentially, and the areas where Beijing is willing to use its powers ruthlessly is expanding. The contest between free and repressive regimes is the defining issue of our times. It has spread to Hong Kong. Businesses there cannot avoid the implications, however much they wish they could.”
Ellen Bork, The Dispatch
“In a way, Beijing's heavy-handed approach to bring Hong Kong to heel reflects a new level of self-confidence and assertiveness the party has acquired under President Xi Jinping — no longer worried about repercussions from the West, it tightens control where it sees fit with a scornful disregard for the condemnation or sanctions that may follow. But its obsession with control also betrays a deep-rooted insecurity…
“For a large, supposedly all-powerful authoritarian state, a tabloid newspaper with a daily circulation of just 100,000 copies most likely wouldn't pose any serious challenge to its rule. But for China's ruling Communist Party, even that is seen as too much of a threat.”
Nectar Gan, CNN
“The concept of a new Cold War between the US and China is hardening into conventional wisdom in Washington. One critique however is that the original version was an ideological clash between the capitalists of the West and the communists of the Soviet bloc. The US and China are locked in a more classic duel between a rising power and a declining one…
“But whether Beijing is interested in (or capable of) waging a global battle against democracy is another question. Is Xi's use of populist nationalism primarily designed to maintain support for an autocratic ruling Party, or is it the authentic expression of a globally ambitious Chinese foreign policy? Either way, policymaking in Washington and nascent US political campaigns -- from economics to infrastructure and from defense improving the social safety net -- is increasingly formulated through a lens of inevitable confrontation with China.”
Stephen Collinson, CNN
“Chinese disdain for international norms is now habitual, ranging from abuses in Xinjiang to its refusal to help establish Covid-19’s exact origin. The failure to apologise for last month’s random, chaotic descent to Earth of debris from a Chinese rocket, which could have proven disastrous for many below, aptly symbolises the arrogant, insouciant exceptionalism of the Xi era. Western leaders last week demanded China start respecting ‘fundamental freedoms’ in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Tougher, concrete action to achieve that aim is going to be needed.”
Observer Editorial, The Guardian
