This week will almost certainly see the end of Apple Daily, a highly popular tabloid newspaper in Hong Kong. This newspaper is dying not because of finances but because the Chinese Communist Party is scared of impure words. Beijing simply cannot handle what the newspaper’s journalists write. (Full disclosure: I wrote a weekly Apple Daily column.)
Acting under China’s national security law, which is itself a breach of Beijing’s commitments under the Sino-British joint declaration, Hong Kong police last week arrested a number of senior Apple Daily editors. This follows the seizure of the newspaper’s assets and the kangaroo conviction of its founder, Jimmy Lai. By gutting Apple Daily’s leadership with criminal sanctions and effectively emptying its bank accounts, Beijing has made it impossible for the publication to operate.
Apple Daily became a target because of its mastery of its trade. It included humor, investigative reporting, and incisive commentary. The newspaper shone a light on Beijing’s war on Hong Kongers’ freedom. It continues to do so. On Tuesday, the South China Morning Post outlined how Apple Daily’s remaining staff are refusing to surrender. They may not receive a final paycheck, but they will keep writing until the last moment. Their courage, risking criminal prosecution in defense of free speech, offers a very fine example for the better nation that China may one day become.
Still, the rest of the world should look awkwardly upon this courage. As China slaughters its free press, the international community is raising only the blandest of protests.
Major American corporations operating in China are steadfastly ignoring what Beijing has done. I recently reached out to 15 of those companies, asking how they could balance their website human rights statements with their silence over Beijing’s actions. The response I received from companies such as Coca-Cola, Dell, Honeywell, HP, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck was total radio silence.
These companies might support American athletes who kneel for their values, but they’re equally happy to kneel before Beijing’s immorality in return for access to the Chinese market. Hong Kong lives don’t matter.
So, as Apple Daily prepares to close its doors, we should take note of its example and of what its fate tells us about Xi Jinping’s regime. This struggle cuts to the heart of the 21st-century struggle to preserve freedom, at least somewhere on earth.
