Hong Kong's pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily bid goodbye to its readers on Thursday as it was forced to shut operations with the Chinese authorities refusing to lift the freeze on its bank accounts.

The closing of the popular paper brings to an end an era of press freedom in Hong Kong as the Xi Jinping regime tightens its authoritarian grip on the city.

The authorities had cracked down on the paper because of its pro-democracy views and investigative articles on some powerful leaders in the Chinese establishment.

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"Thank you to all readers, subscribers, ad clients and Hong Kongers for 26 years of immense love and support. Here we say goodbye, take care of yourselves," Apple Daily said in an online article.

Apple Daily’s premises were raided several times by police and its owner Jimmy Lai and other journalists were arrested under a new national security law.  Billionaire Lai had built his business empire from scratch after escaping from mainland China on board a fishing boat to Hong Kong as a 12-year-old. He had launched the paper in 1995.

Lai has been put in jail since December after the pro-democracy protests broke out in Hong Kong and his assets have been frozen.

Apple Daily shook up the region's Chinese-language media landscape and became a champion of democracy on the margins of Communist China. Its demise leaves only a handful of small online outlets on that side of politics, including Stand News and Citizen News, according to a Reuters report from Hong Kong.

Staff unions at Citizen News and six other media groups said they would wear black on Thursday in protest at what they described as “the government’s blow against freedom of the press,” the Reuters report said.

Apple Daily represented media freedom and was widely read by dissidents and a more liberal Chinese diaspora.

Some rights groups, media organisations and Western governments have criticised the action against the newspaper

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday criticism of the raid on the newspaper amounted to attempts to "beautify" acts that endangered national security. Chinese officials have denounced the criticism as interference.