THE MEDIA
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The first-year activities of the local branch of the Press Foundation of Asia (PFA) included consultations with other organisations to protect the freedom of the press in Asia, and to protest against infringements. The PFA is an association of Asian publishers and editors representing 300 publications. It co-ordinates the func- tions of seven national press institutes.
Hong Kong is the base of Southeast Asian operations for many international radio and television networks, newspapers and magazines. International news agencies represented include Reuters, Associated Press of America, United Press International, Agence France Presse and Kyodo.
Printing and Publishing
Exports of printed matter have more than doubled in value over the past five years. They amounted to some $186 million in 1975, as compared with $80 million in 1970. Australia has replaced Britain as Hong Kong's biggest overseas customer. Aus- tralians are said to read more books per head than any other nation, and about half of all the books published in Australia are now printed in Hong Kong.
There are some 1,200 printing firms. About 75 per cent of them use the letter- press method, producing mainly small-scale printing such as letterheads, posters, wrappers and textbooks. The others mostly use offset-usually with German or Japanese equipment-and they are responsible for the bulk of production. Many specialise in printing books, textbooks, periodicals, calendars and diaries, while others concentrate on wrappings and industrial packaging.
The standard of offset printing is high, with printing and illustrative production techniques comparing favourably with those of the world's leading printing nations. Electronic colour-engraving machines are widely used and colour separation technique is good. Two and four-colour printing machines are widely used and leading printers introduced eight-colour rotary and web-offset machines as early as 1962.
During the past 10 years many overseas publishers have established offices or regional headquarters in Hong Kong where printing represents a substantial saving over other areas, and excellent distribution and communication facilities are readily available.
Many educational book publishers have also established their regional head- quarters in Hong Kong. These include Heinemann Educational Books, the Oxford University Press, McGraw-Hill Far Eastern Publishers, and IPC of London which has set up its regional headquarters in Hong Kong to handle the interests of its sub- sidiaries. The Asian editions of Time, Newsweek, and more than half a million copies a month of Reader's Digest are printed in Hong Kong.
Television
Hong Kong has three enfranchised commercial wireless television stations- Television Broadcasts, Rediffusion (Hong Kong), and Commercial Television; com- monly referred to as TVB, RTV and CTV. The first two operate both Chinese and
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