ENG-1949 — Page 205

Aracuat

Chapter 6.

PRESS

During the year under review the English-language newspapers published in Hong Kong, which included the China Mail (daily with a Sunday edition, the Sunday Herald), the South China Morning Post (daily, including Sundays), and the Hong Kong Telegraph, (an afternoon paper published daily excluding Sundays and produced by the same company that owns the South China Morning Post), were joined by the Hong Kong (Tiger) Standard, owned by the wealthy Chinese 'Tiger Balm' merchant, Mr. Aw Bun Haw. This last paper sells at 10 cents a copy, half the price of the other English-language papers, and has a circulation of approximately 9,000 copies daily. Of the leading Chinese language papers the Wah Kiu Yat Po, the Sing Tao Jih Pao (which belongs to the owner of the Hong Kong (Tiger) Standard) and the Kung Sheung Daily News are generally much more reliable than other Chinese

papers.

There are a total of 53 Chinese-language papers and periodicals published in the Colony, but many of these die out and are replaced or revived from time to time. The two Chinese papers Wen Wei Pao and Ta Kung Pao which migrated from Shanghai in 1948, went steadily left as the Chinese Communist armies advanced South, and now support the Communist cause. The Hong Kong Times, an extreme right- wing Chinese-language paper, has taken the place of the defunct Nationalist Daily News formerly published in the Colony. English-language papers and periodicals, including the Far Eastern Economic Review which has a circulation of several thousand a week, number sixteen of which three are expected to cease publication shortly.

The history of the English newspapers in Hong Kong is a long one, dating back to the earliest days of the Colony. The earliest paper The Hong Kong Register was a development of the Canton Register, which was printed in Canton about 1827, and was the first English newspaper to be produced in the Far East. In 1850 a daily edition was being produced in Gage Street, but three years later publication ceased.

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