Crackdown on Yellow Economic Circle

The "yellow economic circle" app disappeared on Friday

On the heels of Hong Kong police announcing HK$1 million bounties for the arrest of eight pro-democracy lawmakers and activists living in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, national security police arrested five people in Hong Kong for allegedly working on an app that promoted the "yellow economic circle".

Called Mee, the app was developed during the 2019 protests as a way to support pro-democracy businesses. The app not only directed people to restaurants and shops that were "yellow", but also these places gave customers the opportunity to express themselves with a mini Lennon wall featuring colourful post-it notes, or protest-themed posters and figurines as decoration.

One of the arrested was Ivan Lam

Some landlords are sympathetic to businesses in the "yellow economic circle", and many people patronise these shops and restaurants; some people only eat and shop at these places. Some better known ones were Chickeeduck and AbouThai.

Nevertheless, it was perhaps only a matter of time until the authorities would begin to crackdown on this "yellow economic circle".

Four were arrested on Wednesday, the fifth the next day at Hong Kong International Airport. They are all former members of the defunct political party Demosisto started by Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Agnes Chow Ting, and Nathan Law Kwun-chung. The five were also behind the Mee app, which stopped operating on Friday. 

Chinese state media reported the arrested allegedly used profits from Mee to provide funding for Law living in the UK. The app made money by businesses paying to be featured on the platform, and now these businesses fear they could be future targets. However, their political leanings are open secrets, and it wasn't as if the app was not general knowledge. 

This "yellow" store sells products from Thailand 

Following news of the arrests, some shops immediately took down the Mee sticker on their store fronts to make them easily identifiable to consumers, while others did not... yet. In general they noted an uptick of inspectors from various government departments coming in to check out their businesses with many tedious warnings.

Despite the challenges, these yellow businesses intend to stay open as long as they can, as long as people are coming to support them.