The High Court’s verdicts in the national security trial of the Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying (Dec 15, 2025) amply vindicated the Department of Justice’s decision to prosecute him and his confederates. The three-judge panel accepted the prosecution’s evidence that Lai mobilized various fronts to achieve “China implosion”, envisaging the collapse of the country’s economy and a regime change. Through his networks, he sought to persuade foreign powers to impose sanctions, embargoes, and other measures inimical to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and to China as a whole.
Although the judgment is notable for the light it sheds on the anti-China forces’ attempts to wreck the “one country, two systems” policy, it is also fascinating for its examination of the activities of “Stand with Hong Kong, Fight for Freedom” (SWHK). Even before the enactment of the Hong Kong SAR National Security Law in 2020, Lai and his associates, including his right-hand man, Mark Simon, a former US naval intelligence officer, sought to have foreign countries impose hostile measures on Hong Kong, and they used SWHK as their platform.
On July 18, 2019, SWHK was formally established, with its core members including activist Andy Li Yu-hin, former “Scholarism” functionary Wilson Li Chung-chak, and Finn Lau Cho-dik (of “lam chau”, or “mutual assured destruction”, infamy).
Throughout the 2019-20 insurrection, SWHK stoked dissent and encouraged every form of depredation. It also used its foreign networks to peddle fallacies at China’s expense and seek to harm its interests. With Hong Kong Watch’s assistance, it even urged the United Kingdom government to revoke the citizenship of British police officers serving in the Hong Kong Police Force. It raised HK$10 million ($1.28 million) to bring private prosecutions for terrorism against those same officers in the British courts (with lawyers instructed for that purpose). Using the hashtag #StandWithHongKong, Hong Kong Watch’s Luke de Pulford triumphantly tweeted that he had raised “100,000 pounds ($135,000) in just over 24 hours” to prosecute the officers (Aug 12, 2020). In the event, the prosecutions went nowhere, and de Pulford hopefully repaid the money.
It was noteworthy that, in his evidence, Lai admitted to having given money to Hong Kong Watch, whose founder, the serial fantasist Benedict Rogers, was (and remains) a leading campaigner for the imposition of what he calls “Magnitsky-style sanctions” on Chinese officials. Indeed, records produced at the trial showed that Lai paid HK$202,163.94 to Hong Kong Watch, as well as over HK$5 million to Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun and former US deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz (and this was not out of the kindness of his heart).
Therefore, notwithstanding the loss of some of its leaders, SWHK remains an existential danger. It is a multiheaded hydra, in cahoots with China’s antagonists, and its activities must be closely monitored. Wherever they are based, moreover, every effort should be made to hold to account anyone involved in advancing the nefarious agenda that endangered the survival of the “one country, two systems” policy and led to Lai’s downfall. The safety of China and its people requires no less
As the evidence demonstrated, there were no depths to which SWHK was not prepared to sink in its efforts to harm China. Although it styled itself “an independent, grassroots, crowdfunding advocacy group”, it clearly had powerful backing, both ideological and financial. In his testimony, Lai admitted to entrusting HK$118.66 million to Simon to support various groups that he approved, and the judges found as a fact that Lai provided financial backing to SWHK.
This was on the understanding that it would help him instigate hostile actions by the United States and its allies, knowing that Washington was using Hong Kong as leverage in trade talks with China.
Lai’s strategy included grooming young activists (to increase his influence among the city’s youth), lobbying foreign politicians through Simon, and drumming up support for the insurrection. His recruits included several SWHK activists, including Andy Li Yu-hin, its co-founder, who later repented of his crimes and testified against Lai at trial, spilling the beans on the extent of his efforts to destabilize China. Another conspirator, Wayland Chan Tsz-wah, who acted as Lai’s middleman in his dealings with SWHK, also became a prosecution witness, providing details of Lai’s connections with foreign politicians.
Moreover, SWHK played its part in the creation of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) on June 4, 2020, and even joined its “Central Secretariat”. Since its inception, IPAC has spread China-hostile propaganda in various parliaments and sought to harm its interests. Its founder, Luke de Pulford, previously Rogers’ lieutenant at Hong Kong Watch, forged close ties with SWHK’s Andy Li and, to this day, weirdly displays Li’s likeness on his study wall. After Rogers told Lai that de Pulford was launching IPAC with himself as an adviser, Lai eagerly promoted it in Apple Daily. When prosecutors pointed out to him at trial that the Apple Daily story publicizing IPAC appeared under the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”, he claimed it was only as a “decoration” regularly used in the newspaper.
It was therefore no surprise that the judges concluded that Lai was up to his neck in global efforts to harm the Hong Kong SAR and undermine China as a whole, with SWHK having assisted him in various ways, both great and small.
In November 2019, for example, SWHK footed the bill when the ideologue Lord (David) Alton (a “Uyghur genocide” theorist) visited Hong Kong as an “election monitor”, in the company of de Pulford. Although SWHK picked up the tabs for both his “travel and accommodation”, its investment paid rich dividends shortly thereafter.
In March 2020, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong (APPG), of which Alton was the vice-chairman, announced it would conduct a “limited official inquiry” into the handling of medical workers and activists by the Hong Kong Police Force during the riots, with its report being submitted to the British government. Although, as was to be expected of a kangaroo court, the report was highly critical of the Police Force, researchers made a mind-boggling discovery about the APPG during the inquiry.
The APPG’s secretariat was the Whitehouse Consultancy, a communications agency, which SWHK covertly funded with an initial payment of 36,000 pounds. In other words, SWHK, having financed the inquiry with money linked to Lai, then received the report it wanted from the APPG in return. In Lai’s eyes, the report must have fully justified his investments in SWHK.
Even after this scandal was exposed, Britain’s parliamentary authorities failed to act, and the APPG has continued to operate, albeit now more subdued. According to the latest parliamentary records (Dec 1, 2025), Alton remains a vice-chairman, and SWHK continues to fund its activities (in varying amounts).
However, with its cover blown, SWHK emerged from the shadows and, in 2023, openly replaced the Whitehouse Consultancy as the APPG’s secretariat. The contact person is named as SWHK’s Venita Yeung (most likely an alias). Although it beggars belief that the APPG would accept cash from such a tainted source, its mindset is now manifest.
Although SWHK has undoubtedly exhausted much — if not all — of Lai’s donations by now, it has found alternative funding (the sources of which, beyond “crowdfunding”, it never discloses). While some of its founders and enablers have been neutralized, nobody should imagine it is a busted flush. While posing as an independent advocacy group, it churns out anti-China propaganda on social media platforms. In the UK, it lobbies against the proposed new Chinese embassy and seeks the release of Lai. It sometimes works through front organizations, including “Hongkongers in Britain”, which seeks to “unite the people of Hong Kong in the UK, and build an alliance with the international Hongkongers community”. In reality, SWHK is fishing for recruits it can radicalize within the Hong Kong diaspora.
On Dec 11, 2025, moreover, SWHK EU (European Union) announced a new “human rights” sanctions report in the Swedish Parliament (the Riksdag). It was written by Narayan Liu, a staffer, and advised upon by Samuel Bickett, an embittered American lawyer with a grudge against Hong Kong’s legal system. It demanded that the EU sanction 14 Hong Kong officials “representing the Hong Kong Police Force and government” for their roles in combating the insurrection that SWHK had supported in 2019.
Not surprisingly, both Liu and Bickett have unsavory pasts. Having been born in Taiwan and raised in Hong Kong, Liu, a freelance journalist, was granted asylum in Sweden in 2022 because he would “risk arrest” in Hong Kong for activities that would be “considered in breach of the national security law”. He is currently SWHK EU’s project officer, producing op-eds with titles like The EU Must Restrict Trade with Hong Kong (March 6, 2025).
As such, Liu is a perfect bedfellow for Bickett, who was kicked out of Hong Kong after serving a prison sentence for assaulting a police officer during the riots in 2019 (and losing his subsequent appeals). When Bickett is not making common cause with the likes of Rogers, de Pulford, and Liu, he is involved in US congressional efforts to harm Hong Kong judges and prosecutors.
More generally, SWHK EU has engaged in China-hostile lobbying at the European Parliament, invariably facilitated by de Pulford, now IPAC’s executive director.
Therefore, notwithstanding the loss of some of its leaders, SWHK remains an existential danger. It is a multiheaded hydra, in cahoots with China’s antagonists, and its activities must be closely monitored. Wherever they are based, moreover, every effort should be made to hold to account anyone involved in advancing the nefarious agenda that endangered the survival of the “one country, two systems” policy and led to Lai’s downfall. The safety of China and its people requires no less.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
