5.
ARTICLE 19 and The Hong Kong Journalists Association
THE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS IN HONG KONG
After perhaps Japan, Hong Kong has the most liberal and open environment for freedom of expression, and the press, in East Asia. For a population of just six million, a glance at the average news-stand reveals a news and general interest press seemingly overburdened with competition. There are four commercial and government-run radio stations, in Chinese and English, two commercial, bilingual television stations, the choice of five channels of satellite television uplinked from the territory's own satellite service, and plans for further broadening the broadcasting franchise with cable television. To all appearances artistic expression is uninhibited by the authorities: there is a range of theatre groups, cinemas and international festivals, though the majority share the city's underlying conservatism: occasionally, there is political and artistic material of a controversial kind. There appear to be only relatively minor constraints on political expression of the more obvious kind: protests criticizing the British administration or China are not unusual today.
The city is also the centre of a regional and international flow of information. Ease of access to one of the world's most comprehensive and sophisticated communications networks makes Hong Kong the Asian hub of Western international news and business information brokers. On-line computer databases, telecommunications, efficient air travel links and the free and rapid flow of information and people are all seen as crucial to the city's success as a financial centre, to its banks, stockhouses and multinational corporations.'
5.1
OVERVIEW
The media in Hong Kong is neither as diverse nor as critically open-minded as it appears, however. The mainstream Hong Kong press and electronic media is politically highly uniform and pro-establishment, playing a dual role of reflecting the dominant local political landscape, while being important in constructing and maintaining that landscape. Hong Kong's media is a business, with much of it family-owned (though this is changing), and it shares the conservative pragmatism and ideology of the business community. On the immediate edges of this commercial media are a small and partisan China-controlled and a pro-Taiwan press. Though they make the Hong Kong media unique in its overall ideological coverage, the partisan presses have historically been engaged in an internecine battle between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT), often with little direct bearing or influence over ideology or political developments within the territory itself. However, the communist press today, which publicly supports the "one country, two systems" ideal, takes a much more active approach on matters relating to the change of sovereignty in 1997. The pro-China papers now play a central role in Beijing's propaganda campaign to win over the "hearts and minds" of Hong Kong people, or otherwise to relay its views or threats in the
See, for example "Hong Kong", in Information Freedom and Censorship: World Report 1991 (London: ARTICLE 19, 1991), 161-165.
54
: