China’s ominous media purge

Beijing’s inflammatory propaganda machine regards Jimmy Lai, the 71-year-old billionaire Hong Kong media tycoon arrested on Monday, as a “dangerous traitor” hellbent on inciting a “colour revolution” in the territory. In reality, he is a rags-to-riches businessman and newspaper publisher who is Hong Kong’s most effective pro-democracy advocate on the world stage. His humiliating arrest and incarceration on Monday confirms the Chinese Communist Party’s desperation to snuff out what few vestiges remain of free expression and democratic dissent in the disaffected former British colony.

Mr Lai was taken from his home in handcuffs, then paraded through the Apple Daily newsroom as more than 200 armed police stormed through the building, searching reporters’ desks and carting away dozens of files. Mr Lai eventually was taken away with his sons and seven others. He faces vaguely defined charges under Hong Kong’s draconian new security law involving alleged “collusion with foreign powers”. He could face life in prison after a trial by judges appointed by the CCP. Of all the developments in Hong Kong since the CCP cancelled elections for a new legislative assembly, few deserve greater international condemnation than Mr Lai’s arrest. It was no surprise given his influence over the pro-democracy movement.

With polls continuing to show unfailing support among most people in Hong Kong for the democracy movement, Beijing sees it as crucial to put an end to his publishing enterprises, which have done so much to uphold the traditions of press freedom against the communist juggernaut.

Beijing has never disguised its fury over the access Mr Lai enjoyed to leaders such as US Vice-President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. But in a sign of how out of touch President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders are in their attempts to subjugate Hong Kong, Tuesday’s front page of the tabloid Apple Daily recommitted the paper firmly to the struggle for democracy, declaring “Apple Daily Must Fight On”.

Readers were undaunted. They queued in the early hours to buy copies of the paper, which increased its daily print run from 100,000 to 500,000. Shares in Mr Lai’s media company, Next Digital, which publishes Apple Daily, soared as investors responded to calls on pro-democracy online forums for them to invest as a show of support.

Mr Lai’s arrest is further confirmation of how far Beijing has strayed from the “one-country, two-systems” arrangement it committed itself to at the time of the British handover in 1997. It is imperative the world does not abandon the people of Hong Kong in the face of an escalating drive by Beijing to ride roughshod over freedoms they were promised. Difficult days lie ahead of Mr Lai and Hong Kong’s democrats. As the CCP silences them, it is all the more important for the world to speak out for them.