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Tag: Hong Kong

Student Magazine Folds After 74 Years

Written by Zack Chiang on . Posted in News and Trends.

“The times always call to us — the media belonging to the new era may yet arrive in ways we do not yet know.” Whether a message of hope or of resignation, these words marked the end last week of Undergrad (學苑), a student magazine that had published for 74 years at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the territory’s top-ranking tertiary institution. The editors said they were ceasing operations immediately after twice failing to recruit new members. It was the latest sign of shrinking space for independent political expression at Hong Kong’s universities.

Founded in 1952 as an English-language student newsletter, Undergrad adopted its Chinese name and switched to Chinese-language publication in 1959. Over the decades, it became a fixture of Hong Kong student activism. Its situation became more precarious in 2015, in the wake of the Occupy Central pro-democracy protests, when then-Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) took the unusual step of naming Undergrad directly in his annual Policy Address, criticizing a magazine feature and companion book on Hong Kong self-determination as “mistaken propositions.” Undergrad‘s editors accused Leung of suppressing free expression. 

In 2021, the magazine’s operations narrowed sharply after HKU withdrew recognition of the Hong Kong University Students’ Union (香港大學學生會), the student union under which it was published. This followed an expression of sympathy by student leaders for a man who fatally stabbed a police officer and then killed himself. Cut off from campus facilities and funding, the union, and Undergrad with it, has struggled to function over the past five years.

Cover of the  February issue of Undergrad’s magazine, captioned “Hong Kong people deciding their own fate,” pictured above. 

Over its 74 years, Undergrad counted alumni across Hong Kong’s political spectrum, including the late former Chief Secretary Rafael Hui (許仕仁), veteran journalist Ching Cheong (程翔), who was imprisoned in China for nearly three years on espionage charges for his journalistic work, and lyricist James Wong (黃霑), a foundational figure in Cantonese pop music sometimes called one of Hong Kong’s “Four Great Talents.”

Responding to the news, Tou Yiu-ming (杜耀明), a former Undergrad editor and retired journalism professor, told France’s RFI that HKU had lost an essential platform for training young minds, warning the university now risked becoming what he called “an education factory.” The story was reported by Mak Yin-ting (麥燕庭), herself a former head of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, who was detained by police in 2023 while covering a banned vigil for the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

In its closing statement, Undergrad‘s outgoing editorial committee seemed to preempt any suggestion that the closure was a forced measure. The statement’s only oblique nod to politics was its use of the phrase “new era” (新時代), a term closely associated with Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平), which may have been a wry aside. They chose instead to describe the closure in almost lyrical terms. “This is not something to lament with sorrow,” they wrote, “but simply the natural ebb and flow of history.”

Hunter Bookstore in the Crosshairs

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends.

On June 24, Hong Kong’s national security police raided an independent bookshop in the working-class Sham Shui Po district. Officers arrested its founder, Leticia Wong Man-huen (黃文萱), 33, and an unnamed 32-year-old man who worked with her. Both were held on suspicion of “committing acts with seditious intent” under Article 24 of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, a 2024 law often used to target government critics. Wong was also accused of laundering money allegedly received as remittances from a foreign political organization.

Wong’s arrest is the latest in what appears to be an extended national security push against the activities of independent booksellers in the city. In March, national security police raided Book Punch (一拳書館), whose founder faced similar sedition allegations.

The Collective (集誌社), an investigative Hong Kong outlet, reported that officers tore down a sticker outside the shop and lowered its shutters. Last July, Wen Wei Po (文匯報), a newspaper run by the Chinese government’s Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong, accused Wong of “soft resistance” (軟對抗) through events at the bookstore, including talks, film screenings, and an independent publishing fair held with unnamed government critics. The shop had also sold a biography of Jimmy Lai, the jailed founder of Apple Daily, who was sentenced in February to 20 years in prison for “colluding with foreign forces.”

The raid follows years of pressure on Hong Kong’s shrinking independent bookselling community, a trend that has accelerated since China imposed a national security law on the city in 2020. Wong is a former district councilor, an elected local government post, who resigned in June 2021 and was previously affiliated with the now-disbanded pro-democracy Civic Party.

Censoring the Metaverse

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends.

A post by the Hong Kong independent media outlet Boom News (爆炸頭) commemorating the 14th anniversary this past week of the death of Tiananmen activist Li Wangyang (李旺阳) was removed from social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

The posts commemorated Li, a labor organizer and pioneering advocate for independent trade unionism in China who played a leading role in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement. After 22 years in Chinese prisons, Li was released in 2012 in such poor health that he required immediate hospitalization. He was found dead in his hospital room on June 6 of that year. Authorities ruled his death a suicide and cremated his body without his family’s consent.

Meta offered no public explanation for the takedowns and also permanently terminated the outlet’s monetization on both platforms. The removal coincides with growing restrictions on commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, not only in China, where any reference to June 4 is prohibited and removed from the internet, but also in Hong Kong, where authorities have arrested people for posting about the anniversary on social media and a once-massive annual candlelight vigil is no longer allowed.

Boom News is a YouTube-based platform focusing on Hong Kong stories, with close to 50,000 subscribers on the platform.

Trolls Target Hong Kong Press Association Chair

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in News and Trends.

In an escalation of attacks on Hong Kong’s leading professional organization for journalists that has persisted for several years, chairperson Selina Cheng (鄭嘉如), re-elected to the post last year, was met this month with a wave of online abuse — including death threats — after speaking out about government pressure on the press.

The attacks followed Cheng’s disclosure on May 4 that Hong Kong’s tax authority had pursued the Hong Kong Journalists Association (記者協會), or HKJA, with a demand of 730,000 Hong Kong dollars in prepaid taxes, while independent media outlets and journalists faced separate audits and backdated demands. Within hours, dozens of newly created accounts with zero followers flooded the social media platform Threads to attack the organization and Cheng personally. Cheng filed a police report over the death threats, but said police told her they were unable to determine what had happened. “I didn’t know Hong Kong police had such limited ability to investigate cases,” she told Pulse.

The HKJA, founded in 1968, has faced sustained pressure since Hong Kong’s 2019 protest movement, when pro-government figures accused it of shielding fake journalists — an accusation it denied. Cheng herself was fired from the Wall Street Journal in 2024 after taking on the chairperson’s role; the paper told her, she has said, that employees “should not be seen as advocating for press freedom in a place like Hong Kong.” The government-run tabloid Ta Kung Pao (大公報) has repeatedly attacked the HKJA by name. Venue after venue has canceled the association’s annual fundraising gala bookings without explanation.

Cheng said the HKJA would not dignify the Threads campaign with a response. “Rebutting them would only dissipate our energy,” she said. “We will only do the work and uphold the values our constitution demands of us.”

Relaying Global News for Hong Kong

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in News and Trends.

With the space for authentic journalism and media activity in Hong Kong constantly under pressure, the launch of any new outlet is a reason to sit up and take notice — even if the founders are, by their own admission, “not journalism professionals.”

On May 1, a new outlet called The Relay (接力者) announced its formation on Threads and Instagram. The outlet is run by a small volunteer team describing themselves as Hong Kong enthusiasts of history and current affairs.

Their model sounds straightforward enough: summarize and translate reporting and commentary from European and American newspapers and magazines, primarily English and German-language sources. The idea is to make these stories accessible to Chinese-language readers, with all sources openly offered for transparency. The outlet is searching for extra hands to help summarize foreign reporting and design social media posts. “The Relay is sincerely recruiting volunteers interested in history and current affairs to join our team,” read the post on Threads.

It is unclear whether the outlet is geographically anchored in Hong Kong, or whether the team is working remotely across borders. What is clear is that the founders are motivated to find a new way toward “balanced” coverage in a difficult landscape. “We feel that today’s social media is oversaturated, and digital media is becoming increasingly fragmented and sensationalist,” the founders wrote in their launch statement. “Although we aren’t journalism professionals, we hope to do our best to present balanced international news and information to Chinese-speaking readers.”

A Cry Memorialized

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on A Cry Memorialized

As a deadly fire raged at Hong Kong’s Tai Po Wang Fuk Court housing estate on November 26, 2025, Reuters photojournalist Tyrone Siu (蕭文超) captured a moment of grief and powerlessness that stunned news audiences across the world. That photograph, “A Desperate Plea” (絕望的懇求), has now won Siu the Asia-Pacific and Oceania single photo award at the 2026 World Press Photo Contest, according to an announcement by World Press Photo.

The image shows a man, identified only as Mr. Wong, screaming in anguish from a footbridge outside the estate roughly one hour after the fire broke out. Wong watches his home burn, unaware in that moment that a phone exchange he has just had with his wife trapped inside the building will be their last. The World Press Photo jury praised the photograph for capturing Wong’s sense of shock, grief and powerlessness, and for providing a vivid record of one of the most defining moments in 2025. Siu would return to the scene in successive days to document the family’s full story. The blaze ultimately claimed 168 lives, becoming the deadliest fire in Hong Kong since 1948.

To date, an independent committee has held 11 hearings to investigate the Tai Po fire, with testimony from residents and companies involved in building management, construction, and fire safety. Initial findings suggest that building management and fire safety authorities ignored repeated complaints and warnings from residents over safety issues.

Siu, a Reuters staff photographer who has covered the city since 2009, previously won a Pulitzer Prize for his documentation of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest movement. He was among 3,747 photographers from 141 countries whose work was considered this year. The 2026 World Press Photo of the Year and two finalists will be announced on April 23, according to Now.com.

Revising Hong Kong’s Past

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Revising Hong Kong’s Past

Last week, the Hong Kong Museum of History reopened its flagship permanent exhibit after more than five years of renovation. Do the math. The museum closed its doors just months after Hong Kong’s National Security Law was enacted on June 30, 2020 – and it has been closed ever since. The revamped exhibit, called “The Hong Kong Story“ in a nod to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s storytelling formula for what the Chinese Communist Party calls “external propaganda,” displays over 2,800 artifacts spanning six millennia. But it’s the re-framing of the narratives threading the artifacts together that it most worth attention — that is, if you are a media outlet with even an iota of critical spirit.

Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper, published by Malaysia’s Media Chinese International, was the only major outlet in Chinese to touch the story as a matter of journalistic truth-seeking. It ran a point-by-point comparison of the exhibit’s previous and new language. Among the changes noted was a complete erasure of references to the Tiananmen Massacre, which was recast as “political turmoil in the late spring and early summer of 1989.” Gone from the exhibit entirely, the Ming Pao reported, is a previous image that showed one million Hong Kongers taking to the streets in 1989 in support of the demonstrators in China.

Also apparent was the effort to recast the British acquisition of Hong Kong, previously described as “cession” (割讓) — language still widely used even in pro-establishment sources — as “forcible occupation” (強佔). Similarly, the 1967 leftist riots, previously referred to in the exhibit as the “1967 riots” (六七暴動), are now characterized as “Anti-British Resistance” (反英抗暴).

Government-aligned media outlets were notably uncritical. The Ta Kung Pao, published by China’s central government, ran a celebratory feature emphasizing how satisfied visitors are with the reopened exhibit. Sing Tao Daily previewed the new exhibit content with no critical evaluation whatsoever. The most brutally direct response came, unsurprisingly, from Hong Kong exile media outlets. UK-based Green Bean, an outlet run by exiled Hong Kong illustrators, posted a cartoon of a figure on a ladder hanging a new sign over the museum entrance that reads: “Falsification” (篡改).

Silence Follows Harassment

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Silence Follows Harassment

Last Friday, InMedia (獨立媒體), one of Hong Kong’s few remaining independent news outlets, published an unusual apology to readers through its newsletter. The outlet said that its normal operations had been disrupted in recent days  by “harassing messages” (滋擾訊息) as it sought to cover hearings looking into the deadly fire at the Wang Fuk Court residential buildings in November last year that killed 168 people. InMedia said in its message that it had filed police reports in two specific cases of harassment by “unidentified persons” (不明人士).  

On Tuesday, online commentator Fung Hei-kin (馮睑乾), a former columnist for Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, noted in a Facebook post that not one mainstream Hong Kong outlet had covered the InMedia story in the four days since the outlet’s disclosure. In fact, the only outlet to cover the news at all, said Fung, had beenEpoch Times, the right-wing American media outlet backed by the Falun Gong religious group — a brief report that added no new information. Fung likened the silence over the InMedia case to that which followed revelations by the independent Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) in September 2024 that reporters from thirteen news organizations had been harassed or threatened in the preceding few months. The chilling effect on the press could clearly be inferred from the silence, said Fung. “The more you think about it,” he wrote, “the more chilling it becomes.”

A Record Haul for Hong Kong’s State Media

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on A Record Haul for Hong Kong’s State Media

On March 13, the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong (香港報業公會) — founded in 1954 by the city’s four largest newspapers at the time, including Sing Tao Daily and the English-language South China Morning Post — announced the winners of its 2025 Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards (香港最佳新聞獎). The Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group (香港大公文匯傳媒集團), run by the PRC government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong, took home 29 prizes. It was record for the group and the largest haul for any media outlet in this year’s competition. Twelve media outlets reportedly participated, submitting 636 entries across 78 award categories. The result, offering plaudits to a state-run outlet that has been on the front lines in attacks on independent journalists and institutions (including the Hong Kong Journalists Association), would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

A large billboard for the Wen Wei Po newspaper looms over a street in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai District in 2013. SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons.

As recently as 2016, the awards were made across a relatively diverse field. Ming Pao (明報) took Best News Reporting for its Panama Papers coverage, reporting that would be almost unthinkable in Hong Kong today. Sing Tao Daily (星島日報) won Best Scoop and Best News Photography. The South China Morning Post (南華早報) swept both English-language writing categories. And the Hong Kong Economic Journal (信報財經新聞) won Best Business News Writing. Sure, media like the government-run China Daily and Ta Kung Pao did win a smattering of awards. But never were state media so dominant as seen this month.

This year, participation has narrowed sharply, with entries concentrated among pro-establishment media — those aligned with the Chinese government. Meanwhile, Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai serves a 20-year prison sentence handed down last month under the territory’s National Security Law, .

That transformation makes the Ta Kung Wen Wei Group’s dominance worth scrutinizing. Established in January 2016 through the merger of Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, the group is the key voice of the Chinese government in Hong Kong. The group’s chairman and editor-in-chief, Li Dahong (李大宏), is simultaneously a delegate to the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the CCP-led political advisory body. The group’s own materials state that its newspapers are delivered directly to the central organs of the party, government and military every day — and that the group has ranked first in total awards at the Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards every year since 2019, a streak that hardly seems a coincidence given the political changes in Hong Kong since widespread protests that year.

Far from acting as a professional press organization, the group has been at the forefront of attacks on Hong Kong’s independent journalism community. The charge to smear and discredit the Hong Kong Journalists Association, a longstanding institution representing real news professionals, has been led by the Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, which have consistently attacked the association and its leadership. Writing in Wen Wei Po back in April, a pro-Beijing lawmaker called the HKJA “a suspected anti-China organization that disrupts Hong Kong,” while Ta Kung Pao published an opinion article titled “dissolution is the only solution for the HKJA.”

The 2025 Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards send a clear message about what type of journalism the Hong Kong government and Liaison Office of China’s central government intend to reward.