When reviewing the early history of the FCC, members David Roads, Barry Grindrod and Paul Bayfield, found three basic tenets that still hold true today: press freedom; loyalty of staff to members and members to staff; and conviviality.

Conduit Road - the FCC in the 1950s

In the Beginning ... Mr Liao and Chungking Hong Kong Coffee Shop 15 Kotewall Road 41A Conduit Road Li Po Chun Chambers Hilton Hotel Sutherland House Ice House Street The FCC was formed in Chungking in 1943 as an association of journalists fighting Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government for their right to cover stories. Its more social nature soon followed.

After Chungking, the club moved to Nanjing, Shanghai and finally, when communism swept over mainland China in 1949, to Hong Kong.

Just before the move to Hong Kong, the dramatic arrest and sentence of execution of two members - Graham Jenkins of Reuters and George Vine assistant editor of the North China Daily News (and later Reuters) - in April 1949, saw the FCC swing into action to protect its own.

Apparently Jenkins, just in from Nanjing, wrote about the Red Army crossing the Yangtze and the imminent fall of Chiang's armies.


Vine, whose paper subscribed to Reuters, ran the story plus a map which Vine put together. Jenkins was arrested first by a Colonel Yeh of the Kuomingtang's secret police under the leadership of 'Bloody Mao" Sen. Vine was picked up later that day. Both refused to name sources and were accused of rumour mongering and sentenced to execution. Indeed news that Melbourne-born Jenkins had been executed by firing squad made headlines around the world -- at about the same time he was released.

George Vine shortly after his release

Vine managed to call his wife, Ellen, who immediately tried to get the British Consulate to act. The response was slow although a consular official was turned away at gunpoint later that night as he tried to intervene. She then turned to then president Clyde Farnsworth (who six months later became the FCC's first president in Hong Kong). He immediately approached Chiang Kai-shek and started what was to become 36 hours of negotiating with Col. Yeh.

... next