10 years after: Hong Kong alive and well?
By Doreen Weisenhaus Posted Oct 1 2007
With the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to the People’s Republic of China from British colonial rule, tens of thousands of its residents demonstrated for democratic reform in the streets. It seems that personal freedoms, including the rights of association and expression, are still alive and well, but a lingering question remains over the city’s famed press freedoms — have they survived intact? The answer depends on whom you ask.
If you ask the Hong Kong people, their fears about damage to Hong Kong’s free press have diminished over the years. More than half now say they are “not worried” about press freedom, with only one-quarter saying they are somewhat or very worried, according to the Hong Kong Transition Project, overseen by Professor Michael DeGolyer of Hong Kong Baptist University, which has tracked public opinion since the handover.
“Notwithstanding all the dire predictions that absorption into media-repressive China would eventually castrate the feisty local press, the Hong Kong media have at least held their own,” Thomas Plate, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, wrote in the South China Morning Post, the city’s largest English-language newspaper. “Newspapers still bash the central government. And TV and radio, especially, still operate with a measure of abandon.”
And indeed, the news media have played an active and substantial role in aggressively covering developments of the past 10 years. Their intense coverage and criticism of problems in the administration of the first Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa contributed to his resignation in 2005.
But if you ask the Hong Kong Journalists Association, the response is pessimistic. A survey it conducted in January of local journalists reported that nearly 60 percent believed that “press freedom had deteriorated” since 1997, in part because of a less open local government, especially under current Chief Executive Donald Tsang.
Some international surveys have downgraded Hong Kong’s press freedom rankings. In 2006, Reporters Without Borders ranked it as 58th freest of 168 countries, down from a high at 18th in 2002. It noted, “Hong Kong continues to enjoy real press freedom, but political and financial pressures from Beijing are constantly increasing.”
Those pressures include Beijing’s direct intervention in the Special Administrative Region in constitutional matters, particularly on democratic reform. Among the most alarming actions to journalists, however, was the 2006 conviction on the mainland of Ching Cheong of a Hong Kong-based reporter for Singapore’s The Strait Times.
The first post-handover prosecution of a Hong Kong journalist, Ching was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of spying and passing state secrets to Taiwan. He was arrested in Guangzhou while reportedly conducting research related to former Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang, who had recently died. Zhao was purged from power in 1989 after sympathizing with student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square.
Hong Kong media also face financial pressures in the form of advertising boycotts by Beijing-friendly businesses. Jimmy Lai, owner of the city’s largest listed and unrepentantly pro-democratic media company, has said that his publications lose millions of dollars a year in withheld advertisements, despite their high circulations.
But Beijing-related concerns aren’t the only ones troubling the Hong Kong press. Its own local government has engaged in some worrisome actions. In 2004, an anticorruption agency raided several newsrooms to try to uncover sources for news stories that revealed the identity of a witness in the government witness protection program. A reporter ended up identifying and testifying at trial about her source, a lawyer, who was convicted.
Covert but only mildly revealing photographs of a Canto pop star undressing after a concert were published in 2006 and were classified as indecent, prompting a government think tank to revive its recommendations for the passage of strict privacy laws.
More worrisome, though, are laws Hong Kong might enact regarding national security, as mandated by Article 23 of Hong Kong Basic Law, its constitution. In late 2002, the government proposed harsh laws over theft of state secrets, subversion, sedition, treason and secession. After more than 500,000 people, including many journalists, marched in 2003 to protest the legislation, the government withdrew its proposals. Chief Executive Tsang is expected to reintroduce new proposals at some future point, likely closer to 2012 when his current term in office ends.
Until that happens, however, Hong Kong is still one of the freest media environments in Asia. Its Basic Law and Bill of Rights Ordinance guarantee press freedom. The local government imposes few limits on media operations or on access to the Internet. No new laws restricting the press have been enacted nor have any media organizations been shuttered for political reasons.
The culprit for the pessimism in some corners seems to be self-censorship. The journalist association survey reported that three in 10 respondents said they practiced self-censorship when handling news; 40 percent said colleagues censored themselves.
Not offending Beijing is one leading reason. Twenty percent of those who said they censored themselves did so by playing down negative stories about the central government. Politically sensitive stories — such as Taiwan’s independence or whether to call Chen Shui-bian “president” or “leader” of Taiwan — give the media pause. In 2004, several radio hosts who had criticized Beijing’s intervention in democratic reform abruptly left their popular talk shows, saying they had received threats from mainland sources.
The association worries when members of the media hear comments by Beijing leaders such as those in June by Wu Bangguo, National People’s Congress Chairman, that there are limits to Hong Kong’s autonomy. “However much power the central government decides to assign to the SAR, this is what the SAR gets,” he says.
The association predicts these concerns will grow as more media owners conduct business on the mainland and become friendlier with Communist Party officials. In 2003, seven media owners were appointed as delegates to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a top advisory group.
“Some industry players long for the commercial benefits from being the mouthpieces of Beijing, or else they want to be able to get a share of the pie in the mainland media market,” Lai observed in his own newspaper, the Chinese-language Apple Daily, about the self-censorship issue. “They are dooming themselves.”