Photo shows Hong Kong police searching pro-democracy newspaper, not conglomerate

Published on April 17, 2025 at 11:19
3 min read
By AFP Hong Kong

As Beijing criticised Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison over a deal to sell two ports on the Panama Canal, social media users falsely claimed an image showed a search on the company's headquarters. The picture was taken during a police raid on the shuttered Apple Daily newspaper in June 2021.

"Sources said in response to Li Ka-shing's insistence on selling the Panama ports, the police National Security Department will deploy more than 100 officers to search the Cheung Kong Center, and arrest CK Hutchison's senior management," reads part of a traditional Chinese Facebook post published March 27, 2025.

It includes an image showing dozens of policemen gathered in a building.

Screenshot of the false Facebook post captured April 16, 2025

The post surfaced after China repeatedly criticised CK Hutchison over a deal to sell a 90 percent stake in the Panama Ports Company and other non-Chinese ports to a consortium led by US asset manager BlackRock in March (archived link).

Beijing made its displeasure known through two government offices overseeing Hong Kong affairs, which republished newspaper articles denouncing the deal as "spineless" and "betraying and selling out all Chinese people" (archived link).

The Beijing-backed Hong Kong paper Ta Kung Pao also quoted a spokesperson for China's market regulator saying it would look into the Panama portal deal (archived link).

The deal came after US President Donald Trump alleged the crucial waterway was under Chinese control and refused to rule out military intervention to "take back" the canal.

The same image also spread on X alongside similar claims, but a reverse image search on Google and a subsequent keyword search found it actually shows a raid on the office of the Apple Daily, a shuttered Chinese-language newspaper.

AFP distributed the original image from the paper on June 17, 2021. The caption says: "This image received by Apple Daily newspaper shows Hong Kong Police arriving at the Apple Daily newspaper offices in Hong Kong".

Screenshot comparison of the image in the false post (L) and Apple Daily's photo in AFP's archives

Hong Kong police searched the offices of the Apple Daily on that day and arrested five executives (archived link).

The pro-democracy newspaper was forced to shut down after authorities raided its newsroom and froze its assets under a national security law that Beijing imposed in 2020 after huge and sometimes violent protests in the city (archived link).

The South China Morning Post also used the picture in a video report on the operation (archived link).

As of April 17, 2025, AFP could not find any credible media reports that Hong Kong authorities had searched CK Hutchison's office.

Hong Kong-based fact-checking project Annie Lab also debunked the misrepresented image (archived link).

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