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Tag: Hong Kong

Hong Kong Court Backs Satirical Show

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Hong Kong Court Backs Satirical Show

Hong Kong’s highest court has rejected a final appeal by the city’s communications regulator, ending a five-year legal battle over a satirical television program that mocked police during the coronavirus pandemic — just months before the national security law was enacted in the Special Administrative Region.

The Communications Authority had issued warnings to the public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong in February 2020 over an episode of the program “Headliner” (頭條新聞), which it claimed had derided the Hong Kong police force. Segments of the program made jokes about police officers hoarding masks, and in another skit an actor played a police officer emerging from a garbage bin.

Some critics at the time, including former Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英), claimed that the program had libeled the department, and called on police to sue the network.

Shortly after the warning came from the Communications Authority, the staff union at RTHK joined hands with the independent Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) to challenge the decision through judicial review — a process by which the High Court’s Court of First Instance reviews actions taken by administrative bodies to ensure they act within the bounds of the law.

The Court of First Instance initially ruled in 2021 that some complaints were valid while others were not, prompting both sides to appeal. The Court of Appeal later sided with the journalists’ union and association, ordering all warnings to be rescinded.

The Court of Final Appeal’s Appeals Committee ruled on August 7 that the authority had shown no reasonable grounds for appeal, upholding lower court decisions that overturned the warnings. According to a report from InMedia, the court emphasized that regulators must distinguish between content targeting individuals’ or groups’ “status” versus their “behavior,” with the satirical program found to be criticizing police conduct rather than their professional standing. HKJA has called on the Communications Authority to publicly rescind its original ruling and acknowledge publicly that it was wrong.

Going Away Parties

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The League of Social Democrats (社會民主連線) announced its dissolution Sunday after nearly two decades of political activism in Hong Kong, with chairwoman Chan Po-ying (陳寶瑩) citing “tremendous political pressure” (強大的政治壓力) and concern for members’ safety. The left-wing party, founded in 2006 by prominent democracy advocates including “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung (梁國雄) and Wong Yuk-man (黃毓民), once held three legislative seats and championed street protests with the slogan “resistance within and outside the legislature.” The Collective (集誌社) reserved comment on the story, posting instead an image gallery (below) of the party’s closure. Also reporting the news, Taiwan’s CNA compiled a list of the nine parties disbanded in Hong Kong to date. Pro-Beijing media welcomed the move, with Wen Wei Po describing the organization as having “troubled Hong Kong for 20 years.”

Playing With Fire

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Former Chinese University of Hong Kong assistant professor Simon Shen (沈旭暉), a political scientist who studied at Oxford under Sinologist Rana Mitter and is now a visiting scholar at National Sun Yat-sen University (中山大學) in Taiwan, faces accusations of selling pro-Hong Kong independence materials through his Global Hong Kong Library (國際香港圖書典藏館). 

Political scientist Simon Shen. SOURCE: National Sun Yat-sen University.

Wen Wei Po (文匯報), a paper controlled by China’s central government in Hong Kong, alleged that Shen’s online platform promoted separatist agendas while displaying and selling items from the 2019 protests — disguised (the paper said snidely) as “precious collections” (珍貴藏品).

Pro-Beijing politician Elizabeth Quat Pei-fan (葛珮帆) warned that sharing such content on social media could violate the National Security Law. Barrister Ronny Tong Ka-wah (湯家驊), a non-official member of Hong Kong’s Executive Council, a formal body of advisors to the chief executive, raised the specter of transnational repression, warning that violators anywhere in the world could face police pursuit. At the Bastille Post (巴士的報), columnist Lai Ting Yiu (黎廷瑤) described Shen as “playing with fire.” The Global Hong Kong Library website states it hopes to preserve Hong Kong collections and ensure “the truth will not be revised.” For more on the crucial role of archives in information freedoms, be on the lookout for today’s edition of our companion publication Tian Jian (田間), or read their recent interview with Ian Johnson.

Game Gags

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Hong Kong authorities banned the Taiwanese mobile game “Reversed Front: Bonfire” (逆統戰：烽火) on June 10, marking the first time the city has publicly condemned a gaming application under national security laws. The National Security Department warned residents against downloading, sharing, or financially supporting the game, claiming it promoted Hong Kong and Taiwan independence while encouraging armed revolution against China’s government. Hong Kong security chief Chris Tang (鄧炳強) described the game, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA), as “quietly poisoning young minds” (悄然荼毒年輕人思想) with “extremely malicious” tactics.

Created by the Taiwan-based development team ESC (台灣境外戰略溝通工作小組), a civilian volunteer group, the strategy game allows players to control various factions, including those representing Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other regions in scenarios involving the overthrow of communist rule. An ESC spokesperson previously told BBC Chinese the group’s main work is to “contact overseas anti-communist organizations, and assist overseas allies in promoting propaganda and organizational work.” Following news of the ban, online searches for the game surged dramatically, according to Taiwan’s Up Media (上報). The app has been removed from local download platforms in Hong Kong.

China’s America Moment

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Donald Trump’s use of the National Guard and US Marines to quell protests in Los Angeles against his immigration policies became a major story across Chinese media last week. Op-eds filled with images of turbulence interpreted the news as pointing toward imminent “civil war,” words used in several reports. Pursuing their long-term goal of discrediting the US political system, Chinese state media are now pushing at a door the Trump administration has opened wide.

Scenes of aggressive police action in LA are reported by Hong Kong’s government-run Ta Kung Pao.

China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that its journalists had been injured while covering the protests. The article purported to deliver the will of the protesters, quoting them as saying they were “hard-working local community residents who wanted to express their opinions peacefully.” The report reached second-place on the Baidu search engine’s list of hottest news topics on June 9. The same day, another trending post from a prominent self-media account predicted that the events in California were a “prelude” to deeper conflict. “America’s ‘civil war’ has begun” (美国”内战”开始了), the author declared, calling the unrest “the first large-scale street conflict of the Trump 2.0 era” and comparing downtown Los Angeles to “a Middle Eastern war zone.” The post received close to 1.6 million reads.

In Hong Kong, media similarly mirrored these narratives of American decline. The online news outlet HK01 and state-backed newspaper Ta Kung Pao (大公报) both framed the conflict as a consequence of long-term social divides within the US, with HK01 warning that without resolution, America would “eventually fall into the abyss.”

For more on Chinese media portrayals of protests in the United States, and our perspective at CMP on how Trump administration actions have been a huge assist for China’s external propaganda efforts, read “A Trump Card for China’s Media.”

Sundials for Security

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Media outlets in Hong Kong, including InMedia HK and HK01, have reported that Hong Kong’s Education Bureau has updated its National Security Education Curriculum Framework to align with China’s Patriotic Education Law and emphasize “comprehensive security” (大安全). The framework now requires national security concepts in Hong Kong schools in subjects ranging from mathematics to physical education. Primary students must learn about the Hong Kong National Security Law (香港國安法) and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (維護國家安全條例), while secondary students will devote more time to the study of China’s political system, including the leadership role of the Chinese Communist Party. Physical education lessons will teach students about traditional Chinese sports like shuttlecock. Mathematics classes, meanwhile, will explore such devices as ancient Chinese sundials in order to build “awareness of protecting cultural security.”

Weaponizing Audits

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Last month several figures in Hong Kong’s media spoke out about an apparent new tactic being used to curtail the activities of independent media and journalists. Since November 2023, at least six outlets and around twenty journalists have faced tax audits spanning seven years, with demands totaling over HK$1.7 million, or more than 200,000 dollars. The targeted outlets include InMedia (獨立媒體), The Witness (法庭線), ReNews, Boomhead, Hong Kong Peanuts (香港花生), and the Hong Kong Free Press.

The Hong Kong skyline from Victoria Peak. SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons.

Tax authorities made errors and “strange, unreasonable claims,” including auditing one outlet for a year before it was established and asking a journalist to pay profits tax for a nonexistent company registration number. Inspections also extend to family members, including both parents of journalists’ association chief Selina Cheng (鄭嘉如). Hong Kong Peanuts host To Kwan-hang (陶君行) revealed that virtually all hosts, including Wong Ho-ming (黃浩銘) and Chow Ka-fat (周嘉發), received audit demands.

While the Inland Revenue Department (IRD), the territory’s tax collection authority, maintains that the “industry or background of a taxpayer has no bearing on such reviews,” the unified actions appear to be a form of bureaucratic censorship designed to exhaust the operations of independent media. Similar tactics have been used by authoritarian governments in Russia and Turkey, where punitive tax audits and financial sanctions have sought to control press activities. The approach would mark a new development in Hong Kong’s media landscape.

For many in the Hong Kong indie media space, the IRD’s insistence that they were “randomly selected” for a probe is difficult to swallow. “I can count all of Hong Kong’s non-government aligned digital media outlets on two hands,” Hong Kong Free Press founder Tom Grundy told Lingua Sinica. “Most are under tax audit simultaneously.” Grundy emphasizes that his outlet has insisted throughout its ten-year history on “meticulous record-keeping,” but notes that handling the audit “has diverted resources, manpower and funds away from journalism.”

The IRD audit of the Hong Kong Free Press comes one year after the outlet was selected — “randomly,” it was told — for a rare inspection from the Companies Registry, the city’s official business registration and company records authority. “We’re so lucky, perhaps we should put some numbers on the lottery,” Grundy said.

More Targets for Chris Tang

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Hong Kong Security Secretary Chris Tang (鄧炳強) publicly criticized a social media-based publication called Edu Lancet (教育刺針) on March 30, 2025, for spreading rumors and “dividing society” after it raised questions — “sensationalizing,” Tang called it — about the death of a Hong Kong student during a Hangzhou exchange program. Tang also warned against “soft resistance” (軟對抗), a concept authorities in the city have increasingly used to describe acts of peaceful expression that allegedly undermine government authority. The case was covered by a number of outlets, including Points Media (棱角媒體) — a global media collective of former Hong Kong journalists.

This push against peaceful expression was reflected in a report last month by Amnesty International that showed that at least 16 people have been arrested in the past year under Article 23 — known as the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance — for actions such as wearing protest-slogan T-shirts.

At a symposium last month marking the one-year anniversary of the ordinance, officials warned that while “development is an unyielding principle” (发展是硬道理 ), “security is also an unyielding principle” (安全也是硬道理). In a rather stark illustration of China’s dominance of Hong Kong politics, this pairing was a direct copying of a phrase introduced on March 1 by Xi Jinping during a collective study session of the CCP Politburo. The first phrase, about development, echoes a core concept introduced in 1992 by Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平). The latter phrase is apparently Xi’s own recent elaboration, and likely speaks to the CCP’s sense of anxiety about the volatility of the present moment.

A Prize Behind Bars

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The Bradley Foundation, a private grantmaking organization in the United States, has awarded imprisoned Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai (黎智英) an honorary Bradley Prize for his defense of freedom, the exile outlet Photon Media (光傳媒) reported last week. Currently in his 1,570th day of detention, Lai faces potential life imprisonment on politically motivated charges. “Even from his small prison cell, my father stands firm against one of the world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes,” Sebastien Lai (黎崇恩) was quoted by the outlet as saying. “Thank you for reminding everyone this fight isn’t over yet.” The award ceremony will be held May 29 in Washington.

Jimmy Lai picture in 2013. SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons.