Hong Kong police lead Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, one of the most high-profile Hong Kong secessionists, away from his home after he was arrested on Monday under the new national security law for Hong Kong. (Photo: AFP)

Attempts to picture Jimmy Lai and his infamous Apple Daily in the West as the spiritual leader of the so-called free press are naïve, as Lai is not even accepted by Hong Kong residents, who only see him as a "modern traitor" rather than a "freedom fighter."

Following a high-profile operation on Monday that led to the arrest of key figures in Hong Kong for endangering national security, including Lai, founder of the Apple Daily, and some senior executives of the media group, some opposition groups, along with anti-China forces and foreign politicians, have been voicing concerns over the arrests, seeking to arouse sympathy among the global community to continue support for the anti-government movement while criticizing erosion of media freedom.

Some local journalists shared photos of Apple Daily employees sticking to their posts until midnight to finalize the outline of Tuesday's paper, while others showed footage of local people lining up at newsstands at 2 am to get print copies of the newspaper in order to show "support" for Lai and other anti-government figures detained by the police.

Some American hawks and other foreign politicians who have been meddling or trying to interfere in Hong Kong's affairs also bad-mouthed the arrests. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was "deeply troubled by reports of the arrest of Lai…" and claimed that this was further proof that the Communist Party of China has "eviscerated Hong Kong's freedoms and eroded the rights of its people."

Canada's minister of foreign affairs François-Philippe Champagne also said in a tweet that "all human rights & fundamental freedoms, including media freedom & freedom of speech, must be upheld," when he commented on the case.

However, these long-term anti-China Western politicians who have been trying to "have a say" in the country's internal affairs have become ridiculous, as they failed to understand what the Hong Kong majority think about Lai and that Apple Daily is really an evil bridge between local secessionists and foreign forces, some observers said.

"Just ask anyone in Hong Kong who is the biggest traitor of Hong Kong, people will tell you: Jimmy Lai," Tsuen Wan District Councillor Nixie Lam told the Global Times on Tuesday.

There was only one word to describe Apple Daily: fake, she said, referring to countless stories and eye-catching headlines that the paper has run in order to smear the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government and the Chinese mainland, instigate hatred against the police and spread rumors about China.

In December 2019, the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) had sent a total of 16 letters to Apple Daily to express strong dissatisfaction over biased or even fake reports that aimed to arouse anti-police sentiment in Hong Kong, according to public records. Even when black-clad rioters besieged Polytechnic University in November 2019, turning the campus into a war zone by clashing with police and endangering the lives of students, Apple Daily ran a front page slogan condemning law enforcement procedures, while other local newspapers all ran headlines like "Vote to reject violence."

"Almost every day, Apple Daily has been instigating public hatred toward the HKSAR government and mainland. Almost every report [the newspaper runs] on the mainland deliberately exaggerates the gap between the mainland and HK, and the gap is not a secret," Lawrence Tang Fei, a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, told the Global Times on Monday.

Apple Daily cannot be seen as an ordinary news organization or as a media outlet that is critical of the government, because it represents a certain political power that is closely connected with external forces and actively engages in political battles in Hong Kong, Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, said Monday.

New details revealed by the HKPF showed that following the arrests of 10 people on Monday, police found that a group in charge of propaganda was calling on foreign countries to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and even block off the city. Two of the men and one woman who were arrested were in charge of this group's operations, which included using overseas bank accounts of Apple Daily's executives to financially support this group.

This newspaper, supported by some anti-China politicians in the West, lacks professionalism and ethics, and plays the role of brainwashing the younger generation in Hong Kong, observers noted. In 2019, on several occasions, Global Times reporters witnessed the so-called journalists from Apple Daily closely communicate with black-clad rioters during anti-government protests, help them escape from police operations and even verbally attack police officers on the scene.

Apple Daily was launched in 1995 through an aggressive dumping strategy to gain market share, and its parent company Next Digital has lost over HK$1.9 billion in the past five years and a cumulative HK$2.7 billion over a period of 10 years, Angelo Giuliano, a veteran business representative and Hong Kong affairs observer, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"This clearly shows that this venture exists more as a propaganda tool than for a business-profitability purpose," he said, noting that there is an evil link between Lai, Apple Daily and Taiwan's separatist Democratic Progressive Party.

When some Hong Kong people suggested that Apple Daily also helped fuel the propaganda campaign during the months-long social turmoil in 2019 by designing and dispatching posters and banners such as "Fight for Freedom, Stand With Hong Kong" online and offline, and even ran posts instigating hatred and secessionism on social networks such as LIHKG and Telegram, Giuliano, who witnessed the anti-government movement, said he was not surprised at all.

"With the implementation of the national security law [for Hong Kong], I am confident that now it will help unveil some dirty stuff," he said.

While some Western media like BBC and the New York Times see Apple Daily as a Hong Kong newspaper defying the crackdown and the operation as undermining press freedom, some observers ridicule such hypocrisy, and seeing a propaganda machine, which is sometimes seen as a political tool, as a real newsroom just lowers the standards of journalism.