Another “black tiger heart” move?

In the early hours of this morning, Hong Kong police arrested five senior executives of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, and then deployed a large number of officers to search the newspaper. The arrests included Next Media President Jianhong Zhang, Chief Operating Officer Tat-Kuen Chow, Apple Daily Vice President Pei-Min Chen, Editor-in-Chief David Lo, and Apple Daily News Director David Cheung.

Last August, Hong Kong police conducted a massive search of the Apple Daily building and arrested Next Media founder Lai Chi-ying and his two sons on charges of violating the “Hong Kong version of the National Security Law. On Thursday, the Hong Kong Police Force took action against Next Media and Apple Daily for allegedly violating Article 29 of the National Security Law, which states that “conspiracy to collaborate with foreign countries or forces outside the country to endanger national security.

On Thursday, more than 100 police officers were deployed to cordon off the Apple Daily building, and all staff and people entering the building were required to register their ID cards and staff passes, and were asked to provide personal information such as phone numbers and addresses. All the editors’ and reporters’ computers and other information were seized and searched. Apple Daily reported that journalists were asked to leave the editorial department and that a phone (presumably a cell phone) placed on the desk of an employee was “put on line” at around 8:00 p.m. during the police search. That means that a police officer opened the phone, probably to check the information in the phone.

The Hong Kong Information Services Department said the police also searched the homes of the five arrested people, and that the police action was aimed at “searching for evidence in a case of suspected violation of national security laws. In addition, the Hong Kong police also froze the assets of three companies affiliated with Next Media, including Apple Daily, Apple Print and AD INTERNET COMPANY, involving a total of HK$18 million.

The Hong Kong National Security Police said Apple Daily has published dozens of articles since 2019 that “call on foreign countries to sanction China and the SAR government. The five people arrested are all top executives of the company, so they are “responsible” for the style and policy of the articles. The Hong Kong police also said that they do not rule out further arrests.

This is the biggest action against the media in Hong Kong since the implementation of the National Security Law.

Three days ago, Lai Chi-ying, who is currently in prison, received the Truman Reagan Freedom Award from the Victims of Communism Foundation. Andrew Bremberg, president of the foundation, said the world should support Hong Kong as a “beacon of freedom” and not allow people like Lai Chi-ying to become victims of communism.

Lai was smuggled into Hong Kong from Guangzhou as a teenager and later started a garment business that had good relations with mainland Chinese officials in his early years. His clothing company, Giordano, was first a joint venture with China Resources, and its factories were located on the mainland. However, after the June 4 Incident in 1989, Lai broke with the Chinese Communist Party basically completely. He first founded Next Magazine and later Apple Daily, both of which were firmly anti-communist. Lai Chi-ying not only ran the media, but also wrote his own articles, even naming and cursing the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party at the time in his articles.

After June 4, Lai Chi-ying helped some anti-communist media with money, and later simply ran his own media. As a successful businessman, Lai’s first media outlet was Next Magazine. There used to be a saying in Hong Kong that how to want to harm people, he was advised to run a magazine. Especially newsweeklies, basically all of them lost big money.

Next Magazine hired a group of media people in its earliest days, so for a short period of time, Next Magazine was also losing money. Then Chi-Ying Lai jumped in to manage Next Magazine, hiring managers who were business elites, not media elites. Next Magazine completely changed the tradition of journalists running newspapers and adopted the business principle of customer first, writing about whatever readers wanted to read and whatever news was exciting and lively. To be honest, Next Magazine wrote many good articles, but also many bluffing and flim-flam articles, sometimes quite irresponsible, which caused a lot of controversy inside the media industry, but achieved commercial success.

As 1997 approached, anti-communist or businessmen who were afraid of the Communist Party ran away or became low-profile. As a result, Lai Chi-ying went against the grain and officially created the Apple Daily. This decision came as a great surprise to many people. Apple Daily also adopted the strategy of Next Magazine, and was equally quite successful, quickly becoming the best-selling newspaper in Hong Kong. Like Next Magazine, Apple Daily also attracted criticism for many of its tactics, such as the “paparazzi”, a line of exposing secrets that made many people angry, but satisfied the needs of readers. The paparazzi was later cited by other media, and even some Western media used the same tactic.

The success of the businessman-run newspaper, regardless of how traditional journalists see it, did have a big impact. Especially later, Apple Dynamic News, can be said to be the originator of short video, later Shake Yin or headline news, you can see some shadows of Apple Dynamic News.

No matter what, the biggest characteristic of Apple is its insistence on anti-communist stance, which has never changed. Therefore, Apple played a big role in both the Umbrella Movement and the later anti-China delivery movement. In addition to the role of the media, Lai Chi-ying himself is of course deeply involved in Hong Kong politics, donating to the pan-democratic parties in Hong Kong.

Rich again and with the media, this is the opposition that the Chinese Communist dictatorship fears the most. He, along with Next Media and Apple Daily, have become the number one enemy of the Chinese Communist Party’s system of governance in Hong Kong, and are being fought with all their might. In the past seven or eight years, such crackdowns were mainly about withdrawing advertisements and threatening business partners in private, but since last year, the crackdown has escalated to an undisguised stage.

In the summer of 2019, Li Zhiying went to Washington and met with a number of American dignitaries. I also interviewed him at an event at a Washington think tank at that time. I remember that in his speech, he made it very clear that he did not support “Hong Kong independence” but understood why Hong Kong young people had aspirations for Hong Kong independence. He also called on the U.S. government not to sanction Hong Kong on economic and trade matters, arguing that the more the outside world supports Hong Kong on economic and trade matters, the less Hong Kong’s economy will depend on China, and the more power it will have to resist the Chinese Communist Party. So he believes that the United States should give Hong Kong more economic and financial concessions.

So I was slightly surprised, a little, not much, when I read about the new charges against Apple Daily and Next Media by the Hong Kong State Security Police. Because Lai Chi-ying went to the U.S. in 2019 to call on the U.S. not to sanction Hong Kong’s economy, trade and finance, and he didn’t even support the U.S. blocking high technology from Hong Kong.

The National Security Police accused the Apple Daily of publishing an article calling for economic sanctions against China and Hong Kong, and therefore “colluding with foreign forces to endanger the country. I know that Lai Chi-ying does not support economic sanctions against Hong Kong, but I don’t know if he supports sanctions against the Chinese Communist Party. I guess he does, but I haven’t heard him say so, nor have I seen him write similar articles. The article in Apple Daily calling for U.S. sanctions against Hong Kong or the Chinese Communist Party would probably be an op-ed or commentary, and from the media’s point of view, it would be considered a “responsible” article, because it is the author’s opinion and attitude, not disinformation or falsification, so usually the copy editor would not censor it or refuse to publish it.

And it says since 2019, that is the implementation of the national security law before all counted, retroactive.

How long should this national security law be retroactive, and should it be retroactive to what happened in 1989? At that time, many people in the pro-establishment camp in Hong Kong had scolded the Chinese Communist Party and even expressed their opposition to “one-party dictatorship”, including Leung Chun-ying and Tam Yiu-chung. Or, should we go back to the 1950s and 1960s, when a large number of landlords and rightist capitalists fled the mainland, and the media had daily articles accusing the Communist Party and denouncing one-party dictatorship?

Many people may say no, because at that time it was Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping who were targeted, but whether it is possible to be so optimistic, I doubt it. Because the key to whether retrospection will be pursued is actually not who is being targeted, but how far the CCP has gone to the left extreme. During the Cultural Revolution, there was a lot of tracing of ancestors, and even Confucius, who lived 2,500 years ago, suffered and was traced. When the left gets real left, no one can stop it.

Let’s go back to realpolitik. Recently, the US has been making a lot of moves. After the G7, there is the NATO summit, the US-EU summit, plus the US-Russia summit, all these moves are aimed at the Chinese Communist Party. In the past two weeks, the attitude of the Chinese Communist Party has changed, with less tough talk and less action. But from the day before yesterday, the whole wind changed again, with a large number of military planes out again, and on the Hong Kong side, the action became more violent and fierce.

I guess Beijing has a new spirit of how to deal with the new situation, but the new spirit seems to be the old way. It’s like a character in a martial arts novel, no matter how the other side makes a move, he just hits it with a “black tiger’s heart”. There is no tougher, only tougher.

A few days ago, Luo Huining, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, quoted Xi Jinping as saying that he would take action against acts that endanger national security and the prosperity of Hong Kong, and that he would take action when he should, and that he would be in place when he did so.

Now it’s not a lesson, but a family raid, a stick to kill all. This is another characteristic of the Chinese Communist Party system: it is better to execute orders to the left than to the right. When one walks, one prefers left to right, the end result is that one is spinning in the same place and cannot go out.

Political science defines the communist dictatorship, which used to have both economic and political aspects. The economy was state-owned and the politics was monopolized. But then the Communist Party also started private ownership, but why did it still conclude that it was a Communist system? The main point of observation is the media, which is related to the issue of freedom of information. As a rule, the first to be convicted must include a group of journalists from the media. Once the media is fully suppressed, the nature of the entire social system is completely changed. What happened to Next Media and Apple Daily proves once again that Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” has been deformed and no longer exists at all.

Director Locke’s speech argued that the national security law has been implemented in Hong Kong for one year and no economic damage has been seen, no foreign capital has been withdrawn, so it is completely correct and there is no problem. But in reality, this is just an illusion. These recent summits held in Europe are considered to form a consensus against the CCP, and the tricks will be released one by one.

Before a large tsunami comes, the sea is often calm, and the water even retreats to reveal a beautiful beach, but immediately afterwards comes a huge wave overwhelming, possibly devastating. The situation in Hong Kong now is actually similar, and the impact of the international situation on Hong Kong may be unimaginable. Because the purpose of that tsunami is not Hong Kong, but the Chinese Communist Party, but since Hong Kong is bound, it may be jade and stone.