ARTICLE 19 and The Hong Kong Journalists Association
The reported intervention of Xu Jiatun, the director of Xinhua News Agency, unsuccessfully urging Lee to re-adopt the party line, could not postpone the broiling confrontation between Lee and his deputy publisher Chen Bojian, a retired vice-director of the news agency and its place-man on Wen Wei Po.3 Chen is understood to have tried to persuade Lee, under somewhat acrimonious circumstances, to modify the newspaper's criticisms of the Chinese leadership, and to pick up the official interpretation of the pro-democracy movement as a "counter-revolutionary rebellion". Following Lee's subsequent attempt to dismiss Chen, Lee himself was dismissed on 15 July by Zhang Junsheng, a Xinhua News Agency vice-director and head of its Propaganda Department, at a hastily convened midnight staff meeting. Over the next week, 30 or so staff members, many of them journalists, resigned in a show of solidarity unprecedented in the paper's history.
The admission by Xinhua News Agency that Wen Wei Po, since it was backed by Chinese funds, was subject to China's supervision, put to rest the (carefully cultivated) lie that the pro-China media was "privately-owned" and supported Beijing's views out of sheer patriotism and political commitment. Wen Wei Po alone reportedly receives a yearly subvention of about HK$100 million, while in 1989 subsidies to Ta Kung Pao and Hongkong Commercial Daily are believed to have pushed Beijing's financial commitment to the local media to over HK$150 million."
34
Xinhua News Agency has also moved to increase its representation on the board of Wen Wei Po, adding two members from its Propaganda Department and a director from its sister publication in Shanghai. With one or two minor changes, the board remains the same today. Similar restructuring of both directorships and shareholdings have affected some of the other three CCP-controlled newspapers Ta Kung Pao, New Evening Post and Hongkong Commercial Daily.36 The exercise had largely been completed by the time the Hongkong Commercial Daily was fully absorbed by China-controlled Sino United Publishing (Holdings) Ltd in March 1990.
-
The repercussions of the dismissal of Lee, and the subsequent walkout by journalists, continue to dog and embarrass the Chinese authorities today. With fellow Wen Wei Po journalists, including former deputy editor Ching Cheung, Lee set up Contemporary, a China-watching magazine widely regarded as the most reliable source of information on Beijing's policy towards Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Wen Wei Po has been at the forefront of China's attack against Governor Patten's proposed reforms carrying Beijing's most acrimonious criticisms and threats.
33 #
34
35
"Count-down to the clampdown", Index on Censorship, Jan. 1991.
Joseph Man Chan and Chin-chuan Lee, supra note 12, at 122.
"More Wen Wei Po staff quit in protest", South China Morning Post, 22 July 1989. In addition to direct subsidy, all pro-China newspapers also receive advertising from China-owned businesses in Hong Kong.
36
Another pro-China newspaper, the Ching Po Daily, has recently ceased publication.
74