Hong Kong’s forbidden fruit and the national security law: the rise and fall of Apple Daily and founder Jimmy Lai
- The rags-to-riches story that Hong Kong was once famous for has come to an end, with main protagonist absent in final act
- Hard-charging tabloid that shook up city’s media scene undone by weight of law that it railed against
The story of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily must start with its founder, maverick businessman-turned-activist and Beijing’s nemesis Jimmy Lai Chee-ying.
A proverbial rags-to-riches protagonist the city was once famous for, Lai fled to Hong Kong from Guangdong province at the age of 12, sprinting up the ranks from factory worker to boss of clothing chain Giordano by the time he reached his mid-thirties.
Fast forward to four decades later, the square-jawed, heavyset 73-year-old is the most prominent person to have been charged under the Beijing-imposed national security law, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
On Wednesday, his raucous 26-year-old newspaper folded, felled by the weight of the law that had battered its finances and leadership ranks.
At the emotional moment of the paper’s death, Lai was absent, a stark contrast from his omnipresence at critical times in the city’s or paper’s history.
For the mercurial figure now in Stanley Prison awaiting trial, life as a newspaperman began in 1990, inspired by a political uprising. He had produced T-shirts in support of China’s student-led pro-democracy movement in 1989, and was moved to branch out into the media world after the crackdown at Tiananmen Square.