Reporters Without Borders rank Hong Kong 140th for press freedom. They ranked it 18th twenty years ago. That 122-place drop is not an accident — it is a policy.

Numbers have a way of cutting through narrative. Hong Kong sits 140th in the 2025 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. For context: that places it below Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Singapore. In 2002, it ranked 18th. The United States, for reference, ranked around 55th in the same index. China, whose policies drove Hong Kong's collapse, ranks 178th out of 180.

The mechanism of Hong Kong's descent is documented. In 2020, Beijing imposed the National Security Law, effectively criminalising dissent. In 2021, Apple Daily was shut; Stand News was raided and shut; Citizen News closed pre-emptively. Since 2020, the Hong Kong government has prosecuted at least 28 journalists, eight of whom remain detained as of early 2026.

"The Jimmy Lai sentence underscores the complete collapse of press freedom and profound contempt for independent journalism." — Reporters Without Borders

The NSL's broad definitions — "collusion with foreign forces" can mean speaking to a foreign diplomat or UN body; "sedition" can mean publishing an editorial — have created a legal environment in which normal journalistic activity is potentially criminal. The law is also explicitly extraterritorial: it claims jurisdiction over activities conducted outside Hong Kong by non-residents, making it theoretically applicable to Apple Daily UK's reporters in London.

The practical effect has been a press corps that self-censors, shrinks, or leaves. What remains inside Hong Kong is overwhelmingly pro-government or cautiously neutral. What operates outside is the diaspora press — principally Apple Daily UK — constrained by resources, distant from sources, but free, which in this context is not a small thing. It is the entire thing.