The final edition of Hong Kong’s last remaining pro-democracy paper sold out in hours Thursday, as readers scooped up all 1 million copies of the Apple Daily, whose closure was yet another sign of China’s tightening grip on the semi-autonomous city.
Across the densely populated metropolis, people lined up early in the morning to buy the paper, which in recent years has become an increasingly outspoken critic of Chinese and Hong Kong authorities’ efforts to limit the freedoms found here but not in mainland China. The paper was gone from newsstands by 8:30 am.
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.
“This is our last day, and last edition, does this reflect the reality that Hong Kong has started to lose its press freedom and freedom of speech?” an Apple Daily graphic designer, Dickson Ng, asked in comments to The Associated Press. “Why does it have to end up like this?”
The paper printed 1 million copies for its last edition — up from the usual 80,000. On the front page was splashed an image of an employee in the office waving at supporters surrounding the building, with the headline “Hong Kongers bid a painful farewell in the rain, We support Apple Daily.”
While pro-democracy media outlets still exist online, it was the only print newspaper of its kind left in the city.
The pressure on the paper reflects a broader crackdown on Hong Kong’s civil liberties, ramped up after massive anti-government protests in 2019 unsettled authorities. In response, they imposed a sweeping national security law — used in the arrests of the newspaper employees — and revamped Hong Kong’s election laws to keep opposition voices out of the legislature.
The result is that dissenting voices have been almost completely silenced in the city long known as an oasis of freedoms on mainland China’s doorstep. The increasing restrictions have come despite China’s promise to protect Hong Kong’s civil liberties for 50 years after the city’s 1997 handover from Britain.
The closure of Apple Daily raises the spectre that other media outlets — though none as outspoken — will become even more cautious, such as the more than 100-year-old English-language South China Morning Post.
The paper, while identified with the political and business mainstream, has thus far continued to report on controversial issues in Hong Kong and on mainland China, even after its owner, internet business titan Jack Ma, dropped from sight last year after publicly criticising Chinese government policies. Apple Daily’s closure marks a “dark day for press freedom in Hong Kong,” said Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Georgetown Centre for Asian Law.
“Without Apple Daily, Hong Kong is less free than it was a week ago. Apple Daily was an important voice, and it seems unlikely that any other media outlet will be able to fill its shoes, given growing restrictions on free speech and freedom of the press,” he said.
Taiwan’s Cabinet agency responsible for China issues also lamented the paper’s closure as a heavy blow to media freedom in Hong Kong. The island is a self-governing democracy that split from mainland China in 1949 but that Beijing continues to claim as its territory.
“This shows the international community that the Chinese Communist Party, in its exercise of totalitarian political power, will stop at nothing to use extreme means to wipe out dissenting opinions,” Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said in an emailed statement.