“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” This line from Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion could well be the preface to the events leading up to and including the social unrest and insurrection in Hong Kong, which lasted several years.

The events unfolding in Jimmy Lai Chee-ying’s trial in Hong Kong’s High Court provide all the elements necessary for a successful plot. Former staff members of Lai’s racy newspaper Apple Daily (now defunct) and holding company Next Digital have appeared before the court’s three justices detailing an elaborate plan to seek international support for a campaign to bring down Hong Kong. 

Lai is before the court charged with colluding with foreign forces and sedition. In the first 50 days of the hearing, only four witnesses gave evidence, and each endured several days of presentation and cross-examination by the defense and the judges. The witnesses have told of a web of bank accounts scattered worldwide for various coded activities, including crowdfunding and facilitating payments for advertising, lobbying activities, and other expenses.

Name-dropping throughout the hearing — including former Hong Kong governor Lord Chris Patten, UK human rights activist Lord David Alton, low-level activists Benedict Rogers and Luke de Pulford, and from the US, Mike Pompeo (former secretary of state), Mike Pence (former vice-president), Jack Keane (former army general), Paul Wolfowitz (former deputy secretary of defense), and a bevy of politicians — has peppered what could be seen as a real-life drama.

Millions of dollars from Lai’s private accounts and crowdfunding have been spent on overseas trips to the UK, US, Japan and Switzerland, as well as paid newspaper advertisements to gather support “for freedom and democracy”.

Under the Basic Law, a constitutional document that lays the governance foundation for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, all freedoms are protected, except those that infringe the laws of the land. During the riots and demonstrations in 2019-20, Hong Kong had a fully elected legislature, and even the chief executive was elected through a 1,500-strong election committee. In contrast, the US president is elected by an electoral college of only 538 members.

Advertisements worth HK$5.2 million ($610,876) were placed in newspapers worldwide. These included Le Monde (France), El Mundo (Spain), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Berkingske (Denmark), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden),  Frankfurter Allgemeine (Germany), The Guardian, New Statesman and the Evening Standard (UK)  The New York Times (US), The Globe and Mail (Canada), The Australian (Australia), Liberty Times (Taiwan region), Nikkei (Japan) and Kyunghyang Shinmun (South Korea).

The advertisements pulled no punches. Prosecution witness, Andy Li Yu-hin, one of 12 activists who tried fleeing by boat only to be captured by the China Coast Guard and jailed for illegal entry into the Chinese mainland, testified there were differences in the Chinese and English usage in the advertisements. The Chinese version used terms like “sanctioning the Hong Kong communist”, while the English version pleaded “advocacy for Hong Kong”. He also said that some of the adverts included calls for sanctions. Li added that the term “Hong Kong communist” was considered a more-charged description against a backdrop of appealing for donations.

Although the norm is for newspaper editorial teams to operate separately from their advertising departments, by sheer coincidence, all of these newspapers that carried the “sanction Hong Kong” advertisements also ran anti-Hong Kong themes in their editorial content.

The massive worldwide advertising campaign was backed up by international lobbying. The “dissidents” posted a list on Facebook of 141 Hong Kong officeholders whom they sought sanctions against and presented the list to several foreign governments, notably the US and the UK.

Under the umbrella of “Fight for Freedom, Stand With Hong Kong”, the team paraded props of one member who was allegedly sexually assaulted by a female police officer during the demonstrations and an Indonesian “journalist with a damaged eye” before the US Congress and Senate “to present that in these demonstrations and protests in Hong Kong, there are real people who are victims, so she told her story of being sexually assaulted”, said Li who was referring to teammate Sonia Ng, then a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. While lobbying in Washington, Ng, who was also founder of “Stand With You” protest group, held a news conference, wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post, and gave talks at university halls about her claim to gain support for the lobby team. After the news conference, the Hong Kong Police Force said they would reach out to the girl and follow up on the complaint, inferring there had been no previous complaints about the alleged sexual abuse.

The lobbying efforts were exhaustive and sometimes successful in selling the lie that Hong Kong was neither democratic nor free. The governments of the US, the UK and the European Union were urged to impose sanctions on Hong Kong, and Washington heeded their appeals. But they do have consular representatives attending Lai’s trial and, hopefully, at the end they will realize the truth…but perhaps they will never admit it.

The author is a former chief information officer for the Hong Kong government, a PR and media consultant, and a veteran journalist.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.