Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai instructed senior editorial staff at Apple Daily to use the newspaper to mobilise people to take to the street and to call for western sanctions amid the 2019 protests and unrest, the shuttered outlet’s former publisher has told a court.
Cheung Kim-hung, who was also the CEO of Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital, took the witness stand against his ex-boss on Wednesday. Cheung, the first accomplice witness to testify in Lai’s closely-watched national security trial, pleaded guilty to conspiring to collude with foreign forces in 2022, for which he was charged alongside Lai.
“Mr. Lai was the helmsman of Apple Daily,” Cheung told the court in Cantonese as the trial entered the 11th day at the West Kowloon Law Courts Building.
Cheung described Lai, the outlet’s founder, as the “top leader” and “ultimate decision-maker” who would set editorial direction at the pro-democracy Apple Daily. And he, as the CEO, would execute the orders given by Lai to make sure the publication was in line with such policies.
“Mr. Lai has a very clear image. He advocates for democracy, freedom, and opposes totalitarianism,” Cheung said.
He said Lai, in 2019, told his senior editorial staff that the government proposal to amend the city’s extradition arrangement was an “infringement of Hongkonger’s democracy, freedom and human rights,” and the Chinese Communist Party would use the amendment to send “thorns in their side” to stand trial in the mainland.
“Mr. Lai’s instruction was to use Apple Daily to encourage people to take to the street, to put up resistance [against the government],” Cheung said.
“On the international level, Mr. Lai wanted to draw the attention from western democratic countries, hoping that they would offer some help, even some stronger measures such as placing sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials.”
Lai said the sanctions would “prevent [officials] from acting wantonly,” Cheung recalled.
Protests erupted in June 2019 over a since-axed extradition bill. They escalated into sometimes violent displays of dissent against police behaviour, amid calls for democracy and anger over Beijing’s encroachment. Demonstrators demanded an independent probe into police conduct, amnesty for those arrested and a halt to the characterisation of protests as “riots.”
Former Apple Daily publisher
Cheung was among six senior staffers awaiting sentencing after they pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit collusion in November 2022. They had been remanded in custody since they were first brought to court in June and July 2021.
Among them, associate publisher Chan Pui-man and editorial writer Yeung Ching-kee were also set to testify against their ex-boss.
Cheung said he joined Next Magazine, Apple Daily’s sister publication, in 1991 as a financial news editor. He moved up the ranks and helped consolidated the media outlet’s expansion to Taiwan between 2001 and 2005, before leaving the company.
He returned to Apple Daily at the invitation of Lai in 2010 and became editor-in-chief in the year that followed. In 2016, he was promoted to publisher. In 2018, he was appointed by Lai to be the CEO of Next Digital, when he also served as the director of the company’s subsidiaries.
Those included Apple Daily Limited, Apple Daily Printing Limited and AD Internet Limited – three companies which are also on trial.
High Court Judge Alex Lee, a designated national security judge presiding over the trial, challenged lead prosecutor Anthony Chau’s line of questioning when Chau asked Cheung about the reason for his promotion.
“I believed Mr. Lai had recognised my ability,” Cheung said.
‘A watershed moment’
The former CEO also said Lai would give editorial directions to senior staff during the weekly “lunchbox meetings,” which was hosted by Lai and attended by himself, associate publisher Chan, and then editor-in-chief Ryan Law, among others.
He added that Lai started to actively engage in the newspaper’s editorial decision-making in 2014, when hundreds of thousands of residents took to the street to demand democratisation in the Umbrella Movement, or “Occupy Central” movement, in which Lai himself participated.
“It was a watershed moment,” he said. “Since 2014’s Occupy Central, Apple Daily had seemingly become an anti-government, anti-Central [authorities] newspaper. Since then, Apple Daily had walked down this path, and the management had followed Lai’s directions in running the newspaper.”
Lai faces two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed national security law, which also criminalises secession, subversion, and terrorism. He also stands accused of one count of conspiring to publish “seditious” materials under the colonial-era sedition legislation.
The court has so far heard allegations that the former media mogul was the “mastermind” who orchestrated the alleged conspiracies, using the now-closed Apple Daily as a platform and providing instructions and financial support to his aides to lobby for international sanctions.
The 76-year-old faces up to life imprisonment if convicted.
The trial will continue on Thursday. The prosecution had estimated that Cheung would take the stand for a week.
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