Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan (張展), previously imprisoned for reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, was sentenced to another four years in prison on September 19 on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (尋釁滋事). The 42-year-old former lawyer, who completed a four-year sentence in May 2024 for her reporting from Wuhan during the pandemic, had been detained since August 2024 after supporting pro-democracy activist Zhang Pancheng (張盼成), who posted a video criticizing China’s human rights record. Zhang Zhan’s indictment accused her of “widely spreading insulting content about others and false information seriously damaging the country’s image on overseas social media, causing public disorder.” There has not been a peep about the case in China’s media — no surprise there. [Learn more about the “Picking Quarrels” charge in the CMP Dictionary.]
Zhang Zhan appears in a BBC interview in May 2020, several months before her initial detention.
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.
