It’s an irony of China’s vice-like clamp on Hong Kong that the Taiwan print edition of Jimmy Lai’s Apple Daily has been the first casualty, just when its contribution to ‘hearts and minds’ is perhaps most needed.

With Lai in jail and the Hong Kong Security Bureau seizing his assets, the print edition there has appeared as usual despite a decision to stop printing in Taipei, although there is clearly an expectation that it will be the next casualty.

Lai’s Next Media announced last week that Taiwan Apple Daily would cease printing, as its Hong Kong parent was no longer able to sustain its losses, claiming “pro-China forces” had blocked access to advertising for the HK flagship and other publications.

The 72-year-old is serving 14 months in prison on charges arising from the 2019 protests.

Last week the Hong Kong government also announced it was freezing his shares in Next Media and seizing bank accounts of three of his companies, action which it is said, will impact Hong Kong’s status as an international financial centre. However, Next chief executive Cheung Kim-hung said that Lai’s frozen assets had “nothing to do with the bank accounts of the group”, and that their operations and finances would not be affected, while Apple Daily staff have vowed to “continue speaking out for the truth without fear” despite the newspaper group’s challenges.

On its website, Taiwan Apple Daily said it “didn’t lose on the news battlefield”, rather that the situation in Hong Kong deteriorated, causing them to be unable to sustain long-term losses. It will now focus resources on digital operations.

“We reluctantly give up the paper, but we dare not and cannot give up our media responsibilities, our mouthpiece for the people, the pursuit of justice and the defence of democracy and freedom,” the newspaper said.

Printed on six Goss Universal presses, Apple Daily Taiwan was always a standout for quality, meeting not only what staff called “Hong Kong standards” but also regularly winning regional quality awards.

I visited the northern plant in out-of-town Shinwu Shiang in 2007, after calling in on Next Media’s city offices where one of 25 Photoshop experts showed me the trouble they took to optimise images, especially tricky skin tones.

During that visit – when I also called in on United Daily News, prior to its move to new premises – I recalled the Lonely Planet analogy with the “little green man” whose image guides pedestrians at city crossings.

“Time to cross counts down in seconds, and as the deadline approaches, his strides get longer and more frenetic,” I wrote then.

“The bustling city, which seems to trace its history not much before 1948, is certainly in a hurry and – with the reminder provided by a half-hour air drill in which power was dimmed, pedestrians discouraged, and motorists told to pull to the side of the road – may have a limited future in its present form.”

Fourteen years later, those words seem even more telling, and one wonders what the situation will be by the time of WAN-Ifra’s planned World News Media Congress in December. Holding the ‘hearts and minds’ of Taiwan’s population – especially younger Taiwanese – remains a key challenge for Lai’s masthead, and for the island’s freedom.

Peter Coleman

Main photo: Apple Daily