If proof was required that the Hong Kong SAR’s antagonists never sleep, it came on April 30. With an eye on World Press Freedom Day (May 3), two Western organizations, both state-funded, mounted scurrilous and apparently coordinated attacks on the city. They were calculated to denigrate its media situation, besmirch its human rights record, and embarrass China.
Whereas Germany’s state-funded television network Deutsche Welle (DW) — notwithstanding Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying’s national security convictions — awarded him its Freedom of Speech Award; the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Hong Kong, in its global press freedom index 2026, as 140th out of the 180 places surveyed.
As justification, DW hailed Lai for having “stood unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk”, and for giving a “voice to the democracy movement in Hong Kong”. Similarly, RSF referenced “a draconian national security law (that) has allowed the authorities to imprison independent publisher Jimmy Lai”. In other words, both organizations were weaponizing Lai for propaganda purposes, making a mockery of the ideals they purport to uphold. They debased themselves by deliberately ignoring the evidence (much of it from Lai’s own henchmen) that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he had colluded with foreign forces to endanger China’s national security and conspired to print and distribute seditious articles.
Although Germany is gradually realizing that its future prosperity requires closer relations with Beijing, its animosity toward the HKSAR is notorious. For example, when two alleged rioters, Roy Wong Toi-yeung and Alan Li Tung-sing, were facing charges related to the Mong Kok riot of 2016, they were granted refugee status when they fled to Germany (and allowed to pursue anti-China activities on German soil). Moreover, to prevent criminal fugitives from being returned to the HKSAR to face trial, Berlin also suspended its fugitive surrender agreement with Hong Kong in 2020. Although Germany is not a member of the Five Eyes alliance, its actions must have delighted it.
Likewise, RSF, sometimes described as being on a “neocon crusade”, is also bent on mischief-making at China’s expense, as its gradings demonstrated. It placed Haiti, a failed state, at 107, and ranked South Sudan, devastated by a humanitarian crisis driven by violence and instability, at 118. However, nothing exposed the perversity of the RSF’s gradings more than its assessment of Israel, which, despite having killed over 220 journalists in Gaza since October 2023 (at least 70 of whom died while working), was ranked way ahead of Hong Kong (which has murdered nobody) at 116. It beggared belief that the HKSAR, with its sophisticated common law system, independent Judiciary, human rights protections, and commitment to the rule of law (in the 2025 Rule of Law Index, the World Justice Project ranked it 24th out of the 143 jurisdictions surveyed), was adjudged by the RSF to be one of the world’s worst places for press freedom. If such were needed, this was proof positive that the RSF is politically motivated. Indeed, its characterization of the HKSAR was worse than inaccurate; it was grotesque.
As RSF (Reporters Without Borders) could easily have ascertained, freedom of speech, of the press, and of publication are not only constitutionally guaranteed by the HKSAR’s Basic Law and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but also protected by Hong Kong’s national security legislation. There is a lively media landscape, and Hong Kong residents have access to information of all types
Since its founding in 1985, RSF has been dogged by suspicion. For example, whereas it opened its Asia-Pacific Bureau in Taipei in 2017, it has now ranked Taiwan first in Asia for press freedom. Moreover, RSF has previously accepted money from “Cubans for a Free Cuba”, which may help explain why Cuba finds itself ranked at 160.
In response to the RSF’s index, the HKSAR government pointed out that Hong Kong people enjoy freedom of the press and freedom of speech, protected by the Basic Law and the Hong Kong Bill of Rights (which RSF ignored). It explained that since the enactment of the two national security laws, the media landscape had “remained vibrant”, although “some people with ulterior motives deliberately fabricated facts about freedom of the press and speech in Hong Kong”. It then hit the nail on the head when it highlighted that RSF was largely funded by the European Union, the US Department of State and individual European governments, and “serves as a tool for anti-China forces for the US and some Western countries”.
Although RSF is renowned for its China-hostile stance, its extent is alarming. For example, it receives funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), known as “the second CIA”. Funded by the US Congress, the NED seeks to advance US strategic interests by using organizations like RSF to undermine governments it dislikes through delegitimization. It achieves this, for example, by using proxies like RSF to discredit governments, promote internal dissension, and encourage “democratic movements abroad”.
As early as 2005, controversy flared when it was discovered that RSF was receiving money from the US Department of State and Cuban exile groups and allegedly pursuing a political agenda. Many journalists were shocked, and Britain’s National Union of Journalists declared, “It’s very dangerous when press freedom organizations get themselves politically compromised by accepting payment from any government”. It added, “It is really vital that all such organizations are truly independent”, and it is unfortunate that RSF disregarded this sensible advice.
They say that birds of a feather flock together, and RSF exemplifies this. It regularly aligns itself with some of the most notorious organizations in the anti-China movement. When, for example, RSF signed a statement in May, 2025, in support of a detained Chinese journalist, Zhang Zhan, accused of anti-state activity, its co-signatories included Hong Kong Watch, the anti-China hate machine, the Madrid-based Safeguard Defenders (previously China Action), which peddles myths about “Chinese police stations” operating in the West (and is suspected of being a “CIA front group”), and Tibet Solidarity, which, says its website, regards “Tibet as an occupied country and recognize (s) the Tibetan government in exile as the sole legitimate government of the Tibetan people”.
When, moreover, Jimmy Lai was convicted of national security crimes in December, RSF joined others in writing to the British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, urging him to seek Lai’s release. Once again, its co-signatories were revelatory. Apart from Hong Kong Watch, they included the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHK), run by Lai’s ex-employee and leading apologist, Mark Clifford, the Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC), chaired by Brian Leung Kai-ping, who fled to the US after trashing the Legislative Council Complex in 2019, Stand With Hong Kong, which Lai used in 2020 to seek the imposition of hostile measures on Hong Kong by foreign countries, and the World Uyghur Congress, which accuses China of genocide (between 2004 and 2020 the NED reportedly pumped $8,758,300 into Uyghur groups hostile to China, including the World Uyghur Congress).
After it emerged in August 2025 that RedBird, an American investment firm chaired by John Thornton (previously co-president of Goldman Sachs), who enjoyed close business ties with China, was planning to buy the United Kingdom’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, RSF pounced again. This time it joined hands with Hong Kong Watch, HKDC, CFHK and Safeguard Defenders. In their joint petition to the British culture and media secretary, Lisa Nandy, they implored her to block the sale because of Thornton’s China experience. As Luke de Pulford, whose role in furthering Lai’s agenda in 2020 was vividly exposed in the recent national security trial and who is currently the chief executive officer of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which spearheads Beijing-hostile activity in sundry parliaments, explained, Thornton was “extremely pro-China” (a heinous crime in all their books). For example, he chaired the Silk Road Finance Corp and sat on the International Advisory Council of the China Investment Corp, and this was sufficiently damning for the RSF and its allies to demand that Nandy block RedBird’s bid (it was subsequently withdrawn).
By repeatedly hunting in a pack of virulent Sinophobes, RSF must have known it was fatally compromising its credibility. However, with the NED (and its other governmental benefactors) breathing down its neck, it probably felt it had no choice. After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune, even if it is an affront to reality.
As RSF could easily have ascertained, freedom of speech, of the press, and of publication are not only constitutionally guaranteed by the HKSAR’s Basic Law and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but also protected by Hong Kong’s national security legislation. There is a lively media landscape, and Hong Kong residents have access to information of all types.
As of December 31, for example, 87 daily newspapers (including electronic newspapers) and 320 periodicals were operating in the HKSAR. The availability of the latest telecommunications technology has also encouraged many international news agencies, newspapers with international readerships and overseas broadcasting corporations to establish regional headquarters or representative offices in Hong Kong. Whereas the international media has a strong presence in Hong Kong, including The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Nikkei, The Wall Street Journal, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Thomson Reuters, global broadcasters also operate, including the BBC, CNBC, CNN, and CNA. They always frankly give the world their views on the issues of the day.
Notwithstanding its lofty ideals, RSF has degenerated into a political tool for those with their own agendas. Although sad, it has forfeited any claim it may once have had to uphold press freedom. In its determination to smear Hong Kong, it has only succeeded in discrediting itself.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor who was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
