Urgent Business: Hong Kong, Freedom of Expression and 1997
greater confidence in China that media organizations and their journalists now tacitly accept certain limitations on their mainland coverage. It seems unlikely, as Xinhua News Agency officials have reportedly confirmed in private, that the rules will be abandoned while anti-China sentiment in Hong Kong remains.39
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Another continuing concern is the safety of Hong Kong journalists who in China are regarded as Chinese citizens subject to Chinese laws. This was again drawn into sharp relief by the unrest and subsequent detention of journalist Leung Wai-man following the 14th Party Congress in October 1992. According to charges against her, she had allegedly bribed an official to obtain internal documents relating to the Congress, and was held on the grounds of stealing state secrets. She was later released, but her brush with the Public Security Bureau has been interpreted as a warning to other Hong Kong journalists to remain strictly within the law of China.
6.4
FOUR CATEGORIES
Since the arrival of Zhou Nan as director of Xinhua News Agency in February 1990, one of the agency's key priorities has been to tighten Beijing's grip on the local media and "reclaim the ground lost in the public opinion battle" in 1989.40 The starting point for this campaign, according to a report in Contemporary magazine, has been the re-classification of the media into four new categories.11 Previously, the media had been classified into three categories pro-China, pro-Taiwan, and those politically neutral or "middle-of-the-road". The new categories are:
(a) left-wing newspapers controlled by the CCP;
(b)
(c)
publications which are politically neutral but which can be exploited and manipulated by the CCP and thus are the prime targets of united front tactics; these are further divided into organizations which actively court Beijing, and those that need to be coaxed;
publications which claim to be politically neutral or "middle-of-the-road" but are in fact pro-Taiwan. These are less easily manipulated but with extra united front work may be brought round;
(d)
those to be isolated and attacked.
Contemporary also reported that journalists had been classified into similar categories. It had been something of an open secret before 1989 that a unit of Xinhua News Agency's
39 "NCNA declines invite to talks on media curbs", South China Morning Post, 14 Jan. 1991.
40
Zhou was said to be under instructions from Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the CCP, to implement this objective. See "China Seeks to Curb Hong Kong Media", Asian Wall Street Journal, 16 July 1991.
41
"Structuring policy towards HK and Macau: the media classified into four groups", Contemporary,
8 Sept. 1990, 4. "Big brother's blacklist", Far Eastern Economic Review, 27 Sept. 1990, 24-25.
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