NY Times runs propaganda praising Hong Kong crackdown

FPI / October 4, 2020

The New York Times on Thursday published a propaganda piece from a Hong Kong official who heaped praise on the communist Chinese government for its brutal crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

In the article, headlined “Hong Kong is China, Like it or Not”, Regina Ip defended the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) violent response to the the massive pro-democracy demonstrations that started in Hong Kong in March 2019.

Ip, who is identified in the article as a legislator and a member of the Executive Council in Hong Kong, accused the pro-democracy activists of “stirring up chaos” against “our motherland.”

“After months of chaos in the city, something had to be done, and the Chinese government did it,” Ip wrote in praise of Beijing’s passage of a security law that clamped down on the pro-democracy movement and essentially ended Hong Kong's autonomy.

Ip said that the law limiting protests would ensure “that Hong Kong does not become a danger to China.”

Ip, the founder of the New People’s Party which promotes pro-communist policies, said of the pro-democracy movement that “the West tends to glorify these people as defenders of Hong Kong’s freedoms.”

The Federalist's Ben Domenech noted of the Times publishing Ip's praise of the CCP: "If you had any doubt The New York Times is the enemy of free people, they're now publishing CCP puppets defending crushing activists in Hong Kong."

The Daily Caller noted that "news outlets controlled by the CCP have used U.S. newspapers, including the Times, to publish advertorial inserts designed to look like legitimate news articles."

China Daily’s filings with the U.S. Justice Department show that it paid The Times $50,000 in 2018 to publish the inserts. The Times quietly deleted the advertorials from online versions of its newspaper in August.

Free Press International