The Foreign Correspondents' Club Hong Kong

FCC Statement on Journalist Visas in Hong Kong

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong is aware of recent examples of delays involving the issuing of visas to foreign journalists in Hong Kong, as well as suggestions by the Chinese government that more foreign journalists could face repercussions in response to U.S. actions. The FCC calls on the Trump administration to lift its restrictions on Chinese media working in the U.S., and on Hong Kong and China’s governments to refrain from retribution in targeting U.S. media and journalists working in Hong Kong.

The FCC opposes using journalists’ visas as a weapon in international disputes and also opposes taking action against journalists for the decisions made by their home countries.

The editor of China’s state-owned Global Times newspaper has suggested American journalists based in Hong Kong will be targeted in retaliation for the Trump administration’s actions against Chinese journalists in the U.S. On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned of “necessary and timely countermeasures” in response to “the unreasonable suppression of Chinese media outlets in the U.S.”

In Hong Kong, several media outlets have published reports about delays in issuing new or renewed visas to journalists working in the city. The delays have affected journalists of multiple nationalities and in some cases have prevented journalists from working. The delays are highly unusual for Hong Kong, a city with historically robust press protections.

The FCC has urged the Hong Kong government to clarify the impact of the new national security law on journalists working in the city, and has asked the government to guarantee, among other things, that journalists will be free to continue their work without intimidation or obstruction. So far, Hong Kong authorities have not provided such clarity or guarantees.

This downward spiral of retaliatory actions aimed at journalists helps no one, not least of all the public that needs accurate, professionally produced information now more than ever.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong considers it unfair and self-defeating for China to hold journalists responsible for the actions of the U.S. government. It also condemns the restrictions placed on Chinese journalists in the U.S., who are being singled out unjustifiably for punitive treatment by the Trump administration.

Hong Kong thrives on the free flow of information. Its role as a global financial hub depends on its reputation as an international centre that respects media freedom, eschews censorship and where the population has unfettered access to news and information.

Restricting journalists in Hong Kong by reducing their numbers and interfering with their ability to report freely will damage Hong Kong’s international standing and reputation.

FCC Announces New Editor of The Correspondent

August 5, 2020

The FCC is pleased to announce that Kate Springer has been appointed editor of the club’s magazine, The Correspondent.

Kate brings a depth of publishing experience and a commitment to further improve the content of the quarterly magazine. She takes over from Sue Brattle, who is leaving Hong Kong. She starts immediately and will edit the magazine’s October issue.

During her journalism career in Hong Kong, Kate has contributed to regional and international magazines including Conde Nast Traveler, National Geographic, Vogue and Tatler. A writer and editor, she has founded her own content agency. She is also the managing editor of Ariana, a Hong Kong-based publication focused on social justice issues, and the Hong Kong and Macau correspondent for Forbes Travel Guide.

Established in 1975, The Correspondent is distributed globally as a magazine at the forefront of reporting from Hong Kong. Its content covers club news, press freedom issues, speaker events, and lifestyle aspects including food and beverage. The magazine is available to members online and in print.

We’re in a moment of global retreat for democracy and freedom – Suzanne Nossel

The removal of pro-democracy books from Hong Kong libraries following the implementation of the national security law was alarming, says the author of a new book on free speech.

Suzanne Nossel told an FCC webinar that PEN America – a non-profit organisation that defends free expression and of which she is CEO – had been documenting events in the city in recent years and that she was saddened to see Hong Kong’s “vibrant intellectual life… steadily shut down”.

The author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All, noted that we are in “a moment of global retreat for democracy and freedom”, naming other countries, including the Philippines where freedom of speech and press freedom under threat. Maria Ressa, a regular FCC speaker and founder of the news website Rappler, is currently appealing a conviction for cyber libel there.

The effect of the ongoing encroachment on free expression in Hong Kong would inevitably make it difficult to sustain any space for open dialogue in the city, she added.

In her book, Nossel addresses call outs, cancel culture, cultural appropriation, online content moderation, how to address hateful speech, and why we need to do more to amplify lesser heard voices. She outlines principles for how curb hate speech while protecting freedom of speech. One example is how to apologise having published or spoken a controversial opinion that has offended others.

“A genuine apology can go a long way and it should count for a lot,” she said, touching on the current trend of cancel culture that has resulted in the resignations of several high-profile media figures responsible for publishing controversial op-eds.

Nossel, who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations, criticised President Donald Trump for his inflammatory rhetoric around race and women, and addressed the “catalytic sea change” among Americans, sparked by the death of George Floyd.

You can watch the video here

Daughter of COVID-19 victim speaks out about spread of misinformation

For Kristin Urquiza, misinformation about COVID-19 amounted to a death sentence for her father and drove her to launch her MarkedbyCovid campaign to try to stop people suffering the same fate.

During a July 30 FCC online panel discussion, Urquiza recounted how her father Mark, an otherwise healthy 65-year-old, died of the disease on June 30. He contracted COVID-19 after Arizona reopened and the governor encouraged people to resume their normal activities. She said she had understood as early as January that the virus was serious and, concerned by the apparent downplaying of the illness by authorities, had devised a strategy to keep her parents safe. Yet, as Arizona lifted its state-wide lockdown in May, citizens began returning to their normal activities. Urquiza said the downplaying of the potential risks of contracting the virus affected her father.

“My dad took this message to heart and it ended up being a death sentience for him. Two weeks later dad woke up with a cough and exhaustion. My dad ended up passing away on June 30, alone in his room in the ICU with a stranger holding his hand and he did not deserve that ending,” she said.

After his death, Urquiza said she looked through her father’s social media news feed and found ‘overwhelming’ misinformation from unverifiable news sources “which, to my trained eye, I could tell was fake news”. She is now campaigning for safer public health policies.

Appearing alongside Urquiza on the panel was Alice Budisatrijo, who heads Facebook’s misinformation policy work in Asia-Pacific. She said that Facebook had several policies in place to prevent the spread of misinformation and provide users with verified news and public information sources. She said as soon as the platform, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, started hearing about the global health crisis ‘we realised we had a responsibility to help people, to provide reliable information and stop the spread of disinformation’.

Among the measures in place to prevent the spread of misinformation, she said were chatbots on messenger apps that allow users to help find the latest information on the disease, and fact checkers in some countries via WhatsApp. On Instagram, when users search the most common keywords associated with coronavirus, the first results they see are links to the CDC in the U.S. or the World Health Organization.

“We can’t get to every piece of content,” said Budisatrijo, explaining that content that violates Facebook’s various policies is detected by automation and through reporting from users.

Claire Wardle, director of First Draft, a nonprofit coalition fighting the spread of harmful misinformation by providing “tools needed to outsmart false and misleading information”, said skepticism was needed when consuming news shared on social media. She warned that ‘seductive messaging’ in palpably false social media posts shared by presidents and celebrities alike posed a dangerous threat to us all and would only get worse if not addressed.

“We are in a much worse situation than I’ve seen in the last four years,” Wardle said.

You can watch the video here

Hong Kong Police Force Response to FCC Letter Outlining Concerns Over Treatment of Journalists at Yuen Long

Only July 22, 2020, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong, wrote to the Hong Kong Police Force requesting an explanation about their treatment of journalists during several incidents at Yuen Long on Tuesday, July 21, when members of the press were repeatedly asked for their credentials. Here is the force’s response, sent on July 24.

A Message from the Board Re: Treatment of Journalists at Yuen Long

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong has written to the Hong Kong Police Force requesting an explanation about their treatment of journalists during several incidents at Yuen Long on Tuesday, July 21, when members of the press were repeatedly asked for their credentials.

There were several reports, which have been corroborated by footage posted on social media, of journalists wearing yellow vests being asked to produce press credentials when they were covering the first anniversary of the attack at the Yuen Long MTR station.

At least two journalists, wearing yellow vests and holding press badges, received a fixed penalty of 2,000 HKD for taking part in a prohibited group gathering under the ordnance on prevention and control of disease. They said the police had decided they were not journalists.

There were other instances where police “kettled” groups of journalists and checked their press IDs. As there is no official Hong Kong press card, we have asked on what basis the officers decided who was a journalist and who was not.

It appeared that HKJA card holders were accepted, others were asked to show proof that they were being paid, i.e. working as professional journalists, and in other cases it seemed to arbitrarily come down to whether the officer had heard of the journalist’s publication.

Numerous journalists reported having their ID checked multiple times.

The police said they were taking these actions because there are so many “fake reporters” at protest sites, This is an issue that police representatives have raised previously in meetings with FCC delegations.

As we explained at our last meeting with the HKPF, the reality on the ground now is that there are many amateur journalists working in the field. Although they may not be associated with any established media outet, they should be treated with respect and be allowed to operate as long as they are respecting the law.

There are also professional freelance journalists on the ground who may not have a fixed assignment but are working in the hope that they will obtain marketable content, including video and images.

Established media rely on these independent freelancers and also often use unsolicited video and photographs provided by amateur journalists, many of whom may be studying journalism or have recently graduated.

We asked the HKPF to explain:

— Has there been a change of tactics or new orders issued regarding the treatment of journalists on the ground in such situations, particularly when it comes to journalists that officers may consider in their estimation to be “fake”.

— If officers have been asked to check the credentials of people wearing yellow vests to verify if they are genuine journalists, and if so, what criteria are they using? Has HKPF issued a checklist or guidelines for verifying the status of journalists? If so, this would seem to be de facto a new system of press registration based on a set of particular set of criteria that none of us has seen.

We requested that the police clarify the situation and reiterated the FCC’s opposition to the idea of a government-regulated press accreditation for journalists in Hong Kong. Such a system would not be in keeping with Hong Kong’s tradition and culture as a place where press freedom is an entrenched value and the rights of journalists to do their job unimpeded is respected.

Read the Hong Kong Police Force response to our letter.

U.S./China relations: The world is at stake, warns top economist and global thinker

Improved relations between the United States and China is vital to global stability, according to economist and author, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs is interviewed by Club President, Jodi Schneider.

Speaking during a July 20 FCC webinar on how global cooperation is needed to solve some of the challenges currently facing us, Prof. Sachs said that if former Vice President, Joe Biden, were to win November’s election, he would advise him to work on relations between the world’s two largest economies.

“I think the U.S./China relations are so vital for the world that it’s extremely important to set in place a thorough and high-level, extensive and serious interaction between the two countries,” Prof Sachs said. “Between the U.S. and China, the world is at stake.”

Prof. Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University in New York, opened the discussion with the assertion that if President Donald Trump were reelected, the world would likely spiral out of control. Referring to the president on several occasions as ‘mentally ill’, Prof. Sachs said Trump’s ‘dangerous view of the world’ had spilled into global politics, leading to polarisation instead of the cooperation needed to face into current issues including the coronavirus pandemic.

“We cannot have [global] cooperation with Trump as president,” he said, adding that America’s ‘unilateral attacks’ on China meant ‘there can be no deal-making’.

Trump had shown ‘zero restraint’ in governance over the last three years, relying on executive orders and emergency decrees as he frequently bypassed the Senate, Prof. Sachs said. When asked whether he had considered any ‘nightmare scenarios’ of what Trump might do in his final days in office should he accept defeat at the election, Prof. Sachs answered: “Given his psychopathology, he is capable of lashing out in a serious way.” He speculated that this could be in the form of sparking a diplomatic crisis or making an international declaration of war.

Prof. Sachs, a best-selling author and former adviser to three United Nations Secretaries-General, attacked Trump for his Administration’s slow and chaotic response to the COVID-19 outbreak, which at the time of writing was responsible for the deaths of more than 140,000 American citizens.

“Our country was completely incapable of addressing the epidemic,” he said, adding: “Trump, because he is a mentally ill man, he is truly incompetent because everything is viewed through the lens of ‘how does this look on the daily news?’”.

Watch the full video here

US still supports Hong Kong, should open door to its people: Bolton

Former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton told an FCC webinar that Hong Kong still enjoys broad support in the United States even as the city’s freedoms are being eroded, and that the Trump administration should follow the lead of other Western countries and open the doors to Hongkongers wishing to leave, writes Keith Richburg.

Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton appears in a July 15 FCC webinar.

Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton appears in an FCC webinar on July 15, 2020.

Bolton spoke the day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending Hong Kong’s preferential trade treatment, and a sanctions bill aimed at individuals and banks, leading some analysts to suggest Washington and Beijing were headed for a “decoupling” of their relationship if not a new Cold War.

Bolton said decoupling is “not only possible, but is happening,” although he said the likelihood of a military conflict remained remote.

Calling the new China-imposed national security law “deplorable,” Bolton said: “It must be very discouraging for the people in Hong Kong. They fought so long. They thought they had another 25-plus years before this.”

“Don’t think that anybody’s giving up on you,” Bolton added: “I favour greatly immigration and I think what Britain, Canada and others have done in terms of potential political asylum for Hong Kong is something the United States should do, too, so I favour more immigration.”

Bolton, who left the Trump administration in September 2019, described its China policy as “incoherent” and “utterly without strategy”.

While Trump understood the Hong Kong protests of 2019 to be “significant in size,” he was “resolute in not wanting to do anything about it or to get involved in it”, fearing it might disrupt prospects for a trade deal.

The July 15 discussion between Bolton and FCC board of governors member Keith Richburg focused largely on U.S. relations, which have become increasingly strained over trade, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and the coronavirus pandemic.

Bolton also touched on Republican Party politics, saying he would not vote for either Trump or former vice-president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in November, instead choosing to write in a conservative candidate. Bolton said he wants to spend time after the election working to rebuild the Republican Party for the post-Trump era.

His recent book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, details his 453 days in the Trump Administration.

You can watch the video here

Special Takeaway Menu Available

Special Takeaway Menu Available

Dear Members:

With the restrictions imposed started today including the 6 p.m. closing time of all outlets, the FCC will begin offering a special food and beverage takeaway menu. It includes Indian and Chinese set menus and selected wines and beverages.

The menu will be available from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., though last orders must be made by 8:30 p.m. It can be downloaded from our website at fcchk.org.

Orders should be picked up by members at Reception.

Please place orders with the FCC Restaurant at 2844 2806 or [email protected]. All orders will be confirmed by a phone call.

Thank you for your continued support of the FCC.

15 July 2020

Hong Kong’s businesses ‘must seize COVID-19 opportunities’

Hong Kong’s retailers must seize the opportunities brought about by COVID-19, according to two of the city’s best known business people.

Syed Asim Hussain, co-founder of Black Sheep Restaurants; and Goods of Desire founder, Douglas Young, both agreed the so-called new normal was here to stay as the city played a “cat-and-mouse game” with the lifting and reimposing of restrictions to combat the coronavirus.

The two were speaking alongside Asia economist Alicia García Herrero during a panel discussion on July 14 – the day before tighter social restrictions come into force – exploring how the city’s economy could survive without tourism dollars in the wake of the Hong Kong protests and COVID-19.

Hussain, who in 2018 became the world’s youngest restaurateur to hold two Michelin stars, predicted that by this autumn one in three restaurants in the city will have gone out of business. Young conceded that the Hong Kong protests had hit his lifestyle retail business hard, but that the face mask “is going to be my company’s saviour” since his outlets began selling fashionable and washable masks.

The outlook isn’t all bleak, however. Herrero said the good news for retailers was that rents would decrease in the city as the vacancy rate increased due to businesses closing down or moving to cheaper premises.

You can watch the event here