Urgent Business: Hong Kong, Freedom of Expression and 1997
such as freedom of expression), and compelling a reassessment of Hong Kong perceptions of, and relations with, the mainland authorities. It was, for China's part, a catastrophic setback to the work of the local branch of Xinhua News Agency, Beijing's de facto embassy in Hong Kong,' and particularly to its then director, Xu Jiatun, and his careful and persistent cultivation of support across all sectors, but especially the media, for China's resumption of sovereignty over the territory in 1997.
The prospect of Beijing losing its authority in the territory was only marginally less serious than the prospect of Hong Kong influencing political developments within China itself. Throughout the 1989 spring protests, and for a short period after 4 June, articles in local newspapers with limited mainland circulations were available to the demonstrators, as well as to sympathetic intellectuals and party officials, providing a counterpoint to the government's version of events. Adjacent to Hong Kong, in Guangdong province, news disseminated rapidly through the web of interconnecting family and business ties, and, until reception was banned following the massacre, through the spillover of the territory's television and radio transmissions.10 Mainland companies also became the target of a fax campaign to counter the post-suppression news blackout, and local activists similarly organized a "one letter, one person" campaign."
11
Many Hong Kong journalists covering events in Beijing openly sympathized with the democracy movement; indeed, far from being "neutral observers", as one study recounts, they were "ardent participants and supporters", with some reportedly advising student leaders on strategy in addition to their own work assignments. As the conflict escalated into violence, the entire spectrum of the local media was united, if temporarily, in its condemnation of the massacre.12
By late June, with the restoration of a semblance of order on the mainland, the Chinese authorities began to turn their attention to Hong Kong matters, and to the local media. The
Nominally a news agency, Xinhua News Agency is China's diplomatic post in the territory. Since the signing of the Joint Declaration in 1984, it has increasingly assumed the role of a second government, though as yet it has no direct or tangible powers, and is said to be consulted on all major issues by the colonial authorities. Staff reportedly number between 500 and 1,000 with large secondments from the mainland; of these less than 10% work in the news agency section itself. See Joseph Man Chan and Chin-chuan Lee, Mass Media and Political Transition: The Hong Kong Press in China's Orbit (New York: The Guildford Press, 1991), 52.
10
Guangdong citizens were told in mid-June 1989 to remove antennas capable of receiving Hong Kong television transmissions (though viewership there is now said to be back to its former levels). See "Read all about it", Far Eastern Economic Review, 29 June 1989. International radio broadcasts, notably those of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Voice of America (VOA) and Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) were selectively jammed following June 4, and continue to be interfered with sporadically.
11
"Out of reach", Far Eastern Economic Review, 20 July 1989.
12
Joseph Man Chan and Chin-chuan Lee, Mass Media and Political Transition: The Hong Kong Press in China's Orbit, (New York: The Guildford Press, 1991), 115 and 131.
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