The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong is concerned by the repeated cancellations of the Hong Kong Journalists Association’s (HKJA) annual fundraising gala by the host venues, and their implications for press freedom in the city.
HKJA is a non-profit organisation that advocates press freedom and supports journalists and journalism in Hong Kong.
If this trend of cancellations were to continue, it risks tarnishing Hong Kong’s image as an international business and financial centre.
Preserving local history is a key objective of both historians and government officials in Hong Kong. The city hosts a number of museums and heritage sites, including the FCC’s very own Grade 1 historic building in the heart of Central. All of these landmarks are meticulously maintained to preserve their cultural legacy and to educate residents on their significance.
New technology and artificial intelligence (AI) has reshaped how Hong Kong historians track, update, and share their work with the public.
To talk about how these new technologies have impacted their work, the FCC invited three experts for an exclusive dinnertime talk. Speaking on the panel were Dr. Chi Man Kwong from Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), FCC member and writer Billy Potts, and Ani Mohan, a Japan-born Indian tech entrepreneur. Moderating the discussion was FCC Journalist Board Governor Joe Pan.
First to speak was Dr. Kwong. His research focuses on mapping out the aerial and naval battles of World War II, particularly the events that took place in Hong Kong. He explained that roughly six years ago, he began using more geographic information systems (GIS) and historic geospatial data in his daily work. By using these programs to process three sources of data — aerial photographs, maps and urban plans, and volumes of recorded data — Dr. Kwong is getting closer towards his goal of mapping out pre-WWII Hong Kong.
“That’s exactly the advantage of combining detailed study of a certain place through the traces of the past. It really humbles me as a historian,” he said.
Dr. Kwong’s WWII project also led him to collaborate with Billy Potts on his Hong Kong Ghost Signs project.
Throughout his presentation, Potts explained the meaning and significance of ghost signs he found around the city, and also pointed out how making your mark in history is uncommon for the majority of society.
As described by Potts, ghost signs are “defunct” and “shouldn’t exist” but still remain as faded relics of previous iterations of local society. He, along with FCC member Ben Marans, embarked on a unique project to record all the ghost signs across Hong Kong. Their photography was on display for January’s wall exhibition.
“It’s a very privileged thing to leave a record of yourself in history. Most people do not. Most people just disappear. But ordinary lives are not insignificant — they’re important, too,” he said.
In the final part of the Club Dinner, Ani Mohan shared how his family’s involvement with the Indian Foreign Service sparked his interest in learning more about Indian impact on Hong Kong’s history. He recalled a series of memoirs his grandfather left behind which detailed his experiences in the Foreign Service, which included sections on Hong Kong and other parts of Asia. For Mohan, this was eye opening and unlike anything he had ever learned in a history class.
“Everyone has an attic. Everyone has grandparents who have very valuable stories to share,” he said.
To watch the full discussion, please visit the FCC’s YouTube channel:
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong is urging Cambodian authorities to reverse their decision to deny re-entry to British journalist Gerald Flynn and to immediately facilitate his return to Cambodia so that he can continue to do his important work.
Flynn, an investigative and environmental journalist, has lived and reported in Cambodia since 2019, and held a valid work permit and multiple-entry business visa. Despite this, he was denied re-entry to Cambodia on January 5 while returning from a brief visit to Thailand. Authorities alleged his visa was “fake,” but did not provide Flynn further details. Cambodian immigration officials also informed Flynn that he would never be allowed to return to Cambodia because he had been placed on a “blacklist” on November 25, 2024.
Flynn’s exclusion appears to have been an act of retaliation for appearing as a source in a France24 documentary three days earlier. The documentary questioned the efficacy of Cambodian carbon offsetting projects. Prior to appearing in the documentary, Flynn’s reporting had uncovered environmental crimes and the destruction of natural resources across the country, most recently for U.S. environmental news outlet Mongabay.
Since 2022, Cambodia has fallen nine places in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index because of such heavy-handed intimidation and retaliation tactics. Cambodian journalist Mech Dara was jailed for almost a month last fall in an apparent attempt to silence one of the country’s most prominent reporters. His arrest followed the forced closure in 2023 of Voice of Democracy, the country’s leading independent media outlet, at which Dara had covered the troubling rise of industrial-scale scamming compounds across Cambodia.
The FCC supports all reporters’ right to cover stories without fear of harassment or arrest. We urge Cambodian authorities to reverse course and permit Gerald Flynn to re-enter the country.
Four years after the military seized power and ousted the democratically elected government in Myanmar, The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong continues to be alarmed and deeply concerned at the deteriorating conditions for journalists and media workers there.
Since February 2021, the military junta has cracked down on Myanmar’s media in an effort to silence any reporting critical of the junta and its actions. Regime authorities have revoked the operating licenses of independent news outlets, banned the use of satellite dishes and instituted a series of partial and complete internet shutdowns.
Individual journalists have also been harassed, detained, tortured and sentenced to jail terms. According to the Independent Press Council Myanmar, as of 25 January 2025, 43 journalists/media workers are still imprisoned. All were taken into custody on anti-state allegations and many were denied legal representation.
The FCC reiterates its condemnation of the targeting, threatening, detention, torturing and killing of journalists and media workers. We call on the Myanmar military regime to cease violence, release all those unjustly detained, and to uphold freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information.
Journalism is not a crime, and media workers should be allowed to carry out their work without fear of threats to their safety and well being.
The year is now 2025.
Donald Trump has been inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States. Meanwhile, California residents are trying to rebuild their lives after massive wildfires worsened by climate change left their homes in ashes. Israel and Hamas have declared a ceasefire, and hostages from both sides of the conflict are being released. Ukraine continues to fight back almost three years after the Russian invasion, which is now being supported by thousands of North Korean soldiers. In Asia, China is struggling to kickstart its economy while South Korea remains mired in political instability after impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol’s botched attempt to declare martial law.
As 2025 begins, there is a mix of excitement and nervousness across the world for what the year has in store.
At a sold-out Club Lunch discussion at The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong, an expert panel shared their predictions and hopes for the next 12 months. Jennifer Jett, Correspondent Board Governor and NBC News’ Asia Digital Editor, was the moderator of the talk.
Still looming over global affairs are two grinding conflicts: the Israel-Hamas war and the war in Ukraine.
Speaking hours before Israel reached a ceasefire agreement with Palestinian militant group Hamas, Michael Bociurkiw, a former journalist and current Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council who is based in Ukraine, was skeptical.
“The one person who does not want peace to happen is Benjamin Netanyahu,” he said. “As long as this continues, it will keep him and his wife out of prison for a massive corruption scheme that they cooked up over the years.” (Netanyahu has rejected the charges.)
Peace also seems out of reach in the Ukraine war as it expands to Russia, where Ukrainian forces launched an August incursion in the region of Kursk and have been carrying out long-range drone strikes.
“You can’t blame Ukrainians for wanting to bring the war to the doorsteps of ordinary Russians,” said Bociurkiw, who pointed out that no civilians were killed in a Jan. 8 drone strike on a key Russian oil depot, in contrast to the scores of Ukrainians killed by Russian airstrikes.
The panelists also discussed the economic situation in mainland China and how a second Trump presidency might affect U.S.-China trade.
Juliana Liu, senior business editor at CNN International, said she was “not optimistic” about a Chinese economic turnaround this year, especially with Trump’s return to the Oval Office and the series of tariffs he’s expected to place on Chinese technology and other goods.
She said Trump was likely to maintain and even strengthen U.S. export curbs on strategic technologies, such as those on AI chips that were issued by President Joe Biden during his final days in office. Though the U.S. cites national security concerns, China says the restrictions are aimed at hobbling its development.
“So far it’s still a ‘cold’ war, it’s not a ‘hot’ war,” Liu said. “But anyone in this space will know that this is massively consequential. Computer chips are the oil and gas and gold of our age.”
Wang Xiangwei, a former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post who now teaches journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University, said China’s financial troubles are caused not by any external factors, but by an over-reliance on the country’s infrastructure investment and exports, as well as the government’s struggle to spur domestic consumption.
“They will have to do something more than providing subsidies for households to upgrade their electrical appliances. To boost domestic consumption, you have to put money in the hands of people,” Wang said.
He also said both the mainland and Hong Kong governments have done a poor job of explaining themselves to the outside world, fueling misconceptions and misunderstandings. Wang said the invitation Chinese President Xi Jinping received to Trump’s inauguration, though unusual, was “a great opportunity that China missed.”
“The two leaders should really meet as soon as possible to avert another war over trade,” he said, “and then to talk about how the two countries could really seek a durable coexistence.”
To watch the full discussion, please visit the FCC’s YouTube channel: