THE MEDIA
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Chinese and English language newspapers are represented by the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong, which has 14 members and three associate members. It is em- powered to act in matters affecting the interests of local newspapers, the society or its members.
The activities of the local office of the Press Foundation of Asia (PFA) include consultations with other organisations to help them in the development and expansion of the press in Asia. The PFA is an association of Asian publishers and editors representing 300 publications. It co-ordinates the functions of seven national press institutes-from New Delhi to Korea.
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, Kyodo, and Jiji Press.
Printing and Publishing
Hong Kong is an important printing centre which handles work from many parts of the world-particularly from Australia, Britain and the United States. Australians 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.
The main attraction is that top quality printing is available at substantial savings over other places, and there are also excellent distribution and communication facilities readily available. In 1976 exports of printed matter amounted to some $212 million as compared with $99 million in 1971.
There are some 1,200 printing firms and about a quarter of them are responsible for the bulk of production. They run highly efficient offset printing works operating with machinery imported mainly from West Germany and Japan. Many specialise in printing books, glossy magazines, textbooks, 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.
The other 75 per cent of printing firms use the letterpress method and generally produce small-scale printing such as letterheads, posters, wrappers, and some text- books.
Since the 1960s many overseas publishers have set up offices or regional headquarters in Hong Kong. Educational book publishers who have done so include Heinemann Educational Books, the Oxford University Press, McGraw-Hill Far East- ern Publishers, and IPC of London-which has set up regional headquarters to handle the interests of its subsidiaries. The Asian editions of Time, Newsweek, and more than half a million copies a month of Reader's Digest are printed in Hong Kong.