The Hong Kong FCC Edition

Colin here. When the veil of COVID is raised sometime in the future, a lot of the world will not look the same. When we went into the pandemic, Hong Kong was still a separate entity under the “one country two systems” arrangement, with many protesting the increasing Chinese control through youth-centered demonstrations. As we emerge, it is now a place where the Chinese state has usurped control. Teachers need to report students who utter words against the party, the free press has been systematically dismantled, and most recently, Hong Kong University has covered up a prominent Tiananmen Square memorial in the latest sign of China’s increasingly strict control over the semi-autonomous region.

According to CNN: 

In the past year, two of Hong Kong's biggest pro-democracy media outlets were toppled after enormous government pressure, a series of arrests and police raids on their newsrooms. A third organization — the five-year-old Citizen News — announced last week that it would shut down, too. But unlike Apple Daily and Stand News, Citizen News didn't wait for police to come knocking before closing shop….In the 18 months since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, the line defining what can still be published without breaking the law has become increasingly blurred. That's made it all the more difficult for journalists to know what the authorities consider acceptable, and what could land them in prison for years.

Why is this interesting? 

For the past few decades, Hong Kong was a bastion of press freedom in Asia and served as regional hubs for global publications like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Economist, and countless others. 

Now, some of these same journalists (Economist, Financial Times) have had found themselves unable to renew their visas due to pressure from mainland China. 

With that said, an interesting bastion remains: The Hong Kong Foreign Correspondent’s Club. It’s a place out of central casting—where you can see older gentlemen in linen suits recounting their times in the jungle covering Vietnam over a curry, with a rugby sevens match playing in the background. While this might strike some as an outdated vestige, it is proving to be a strong proponent of free speech and free press in Hong Kong. 

The club serves as a real-life social network for scribes in the city and pours a frosty G&T, but also issues important reports and surveys of journalists, helping to spread a fact-checked and substantive message about the erosion of press freedom to a global audience. 

According to a recent FCC issued survey:

In a wide-ranging survey of the FCC’s correspondent and journalist members, 84% of respondents said the working environment for journalism has “changed for the worse” since the [National Security] law’s introduction in June 2020. At the same time, 91% of respondents said they were either “very concerned” (76%) or “slightly concerned” (15%) about the possible introduction of a fake news law. Concern has been heightened by the fact that, since the enactment of the National Security Law, there has been a drastic decline in the willingness of sources to be quoted–86% of respondents said their sources were less willing to be quoted or to discuss sensitive subjects, and there is concern that even relatively neutral topics might be deemed “a bit political.”

It’s not just in Hong Kong. The Chinese wing of the Foreign Correspondents Club, known as the FCCC, based in Beijing, just issued a similar warning from those international reporters covering the mainland: “The FCCC highlights this development with alarm,” the article concludes, “as foreigners involved in civil or criminal lawsuits and court proceedings in China can be banned from leaving the country, based on past precedent.” 

Despite crackdowns and being labeled “illegal organizations” by China, both clubs continue to release research and reporting. While it’s not clear how long Hong Kong’s FCC or the FCCC will be able to continue their full-throated defense, the fact they are still doing it in the face of headwinds demands some serious respect from those who value press freedom. (CJN)

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) 

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