| dc.description.abstract | Despite the influx of outside owners of the media, within Hong Kong there are some strong independent media owners who uphold freedom of expression. Hutcheon focuses on Jimmy Law Chee-ying, the publisher of the Chinese language Apple Daily, the best-selling Hong Kong newspaper. He has shown himself unafraid of challenging and even insulting China’s leaders. He had also been a co-owner of the clothing retailer Giordano, which has stores all over Asia, including China. When in 1993 he called China’s then Prime Minister Li Peng, a “turtle’s egg with a zero IQ” because he had carried out the orders to crack down on the Tiananmen Square protestors, his stores in Beijing and Shanghai were closed down. He then sold his stake in Giordano and concentrated completely on his publishing empire. Although his publications have not directly insulted China’s leaders since the takeover, they continue to report relatively objectively on events in China.
Daily continues to be the largest paper in post-takeover Hong Kong not because of its hard-hitting political reporting, but because of its sensationalist coverage of sex, crime, and scandals and its unique column on Hong Kong’s red light district and brothels. Apple Daily’s large circulation may also be due to the fact that it more closely reflects the concerns of Hong Kong’s population than any foreign-owned or Beijing-run newspaper, such as Ta Kung Pao. The Harvard intellectual historian, Leo Lee, explains that while on the surface nothing much seems to have changed in Hong Kong, he reveals that underneath much is changing and that change is mirrored in Apple Daily. While the former British culture and language has been pushed aside by Chinese culture and language, it is not by the Mandarin culture and language of Beijing, but by the Cantonese culture and language of nearby Guangdong. Cantonese make up the overwhelming majority of Hong Kong’s population. Jimmy Lai is Cantonese and his Apple Daily expresses that culture and language. Thus, its impact on Hong Kong’s population is bound to be much greater than that of the South China Morning Post or Star TV. What happens to Jimmy Lai and his Apple Daily may be the best predictor of Hong Kong’s future under Beijing rule.
Individuals, public pressure groups and LegCo also act as watchdogs. Mr. Tsui’s attack on Radio Television Hong Kong was almost unanimously condemned. Hong Kong’s chief administrator, Anson Chan has repeatedly emphasized that a critical media is vital to an open, vigorous economy and society. If Hong Kong lost its freedom of expression and information, she warns, it could not maintain its world economic status. Even though the elected LegCo had been dissolved after the takeover, pro-democratic groups made a spectacular comeback in Hong Kong’s first legislative election under Chinese rule. Although the pro-Beijing administration devised the new electoral system, based on restricted proportional representation, to stop the Democratic Party of Martin Lee, in the election to the new LegCo in May 1998, the Democratic Party and their allies took 15 of the 20 directly elected seats. Therefore, for the first time since the 1949 Communist revolution, China has a legally recognized opposition party.
The accepted wisdom has been that Beijing will determine Hong Kong’s future, but there is the possibility, as suggested in this paper and as seen in the events since the takeover, that such Hong Kong phenomena as an independent publisher, such as Jimmy Lai, and a legally recognized opposition party, may, in the long rum, have a greater impact on China than Beijing has on Hong Kong. | en_US |
