
Frozen Out
An independent media operator arrested on suspicion of sedition in Hong Kong says all his bank accounts were frozen without notice.

The Newspaper Society of Hong Kong (香港報業公會) is a newspaper industry association established on May 10, 1954, originally founded by four of Hong Kong’s largest newspapers at the time: Kung Sheung Daily News (工商日報), Wah Kiu Yat Po (華僑日報), Sing Tao Daily (星島日報), and the English-language South China Morning Post. It serves as the largest newspaper industry body in Hong Kong, with current membership comprising 14 major newspapers, but has increasingly represented pro-government and pro-Beijing positions. The society organizes the annual Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards. A Lingua Sinica analysis in 2026 found that the Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group (香港大公文匯傂媒集團) — run by the PRC government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong — has ranked first in total awards at the society’s annual journalism competition every year since 2019, a period coinciding with Hong Kong’s broader press freedom contraction following the 2019 protests. As recently as 2016, the awards were distributed across a more diverse field of independent outlets. In May 2023, it hosted a delegation from the All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新職工作者協會), or ACJA, a party-led body whose constitution explicitly states it “serves as a bridge between the Party, the Chinese government and the press,” and which functions as a key instrument of CCP press control — managing the issuance of press cards to journalists in China and administering mandatory training in Marxist journalism doctrine. In June 2026, the society jointly signed a memorandum of understanding with Khabar Agency (哈巴爾通訊社), Kazakhstan’s state-owned broadcaster, alongside the Hong Kong News Executives’ Association (新職行政人員協會), during a visit to Astana by Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu that stressed the “telling of the Hong Kong story,” in echo of the CCP’s external propaganda objectives.
