With RTHK coming under increasing criticism from the government in recent months, former BBC Director-General and New York Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson spoke about the challenges facing public broadcasters in Hong Kong and around the world in a Zoom interview with The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong on Tuesday.

“In countries which don’t really have any big commitment to democracy, and who genuinely believe, or claim to believe, that solidarity and focus on what we all agree on is good – and everything else is not legitimate and valuable but actually is illegitimate and criminal – it’s not surprising that a public broadcaster gets acute pressure from the authorities,” said Thompson. “That seems to be playing out in Hong Kong as it is in so many other countries.”

Commenting on recent troubling developments including the suspension of a satirical programme as well as the arrest of an investigative reporter, Thompson expressed sympathy and solidarity with RTHK. “I’ve been interviewed by them, have colleagues there and regard RTHK as a sister broadcaster,” he said. When you threaten one public broadcaster, you kind of threaten them all in a way. It’s a bit like NATO: an attack on one is an attack on all.”

Reflecting on the history of RTHK, Thompson noted that it had not always exercised the same level of editorial independence that it has in recent years, particularly during the colonial era. “After the handover, clearly RTHK made real efforts to try and be dispassionate and objective in the way it covered, let’s say, last year’s disruptions and the government and the protesters,” said Thompson. “It feels like they’re under more pressure [now].”

Thompson also highlighted the important role that governments should play, or rather should not play, in allowing public broadcasters to operate freely. “It really depends on a group of very powerful people exercising self-restraint” and believing that “it’s in the greater public good that there should be an exchange of ideas, that journalists should be allowed to hold governments to account.” Ultimately, Thompson argued, “If the government doesn’t want it to exist, it won’t exist. In the end, they can switch you off.”

Thompson made clear that the problem isn’t limited to Hong Kong – “this is true of Western liberal democracies, it’s true of controlled societies” – and cited examples including Russia and nations in central and eastern Europe to illustrate his point, as well as his former employer. “The BBC has remained over decades a beacon of independence,” said Thompson, but not without its challenges.

“Winston Churchill hated the BBC and hated the idea of having a public broadcaster who was outside his control,” said Thompson, noting that, in more recent times, the British government has occasionally taken a more hands-on, aggressive approach to the public broadcaster in the form of official enquiries or funding cuts. He pointed to “wounded egos” inside Boris Johnson’s government who felt the broadcaster had been too tough on the Conservatives’ election campaign and threatened retribution. When the people controlling the purse strings threaten public broadcasters, Thompson said, “it’s bad for democracy.”

As for news organisations that aren’t supported by government funds, Thompson said they have their own challenges to face but dismissed the notion that consumers aren’t willing to spend on news subscriptions. “The whole notion that people won’t pay for news is based on a vision of the Internet circa 1999,” said Thompson, who argued that the public’s willingness to pay for different sources of entertainment such as Netflix proves that they are willing to do the same for high-quality news.

Still, he said, there are many financial challenges for newspapers to overcome, both due to the ongoing pandemic as well as long-term trends such as Facebook and Google providing cheap digital advertising solutions that have disrupted business models. Thompson was optimistic about the future, however, saying that “the idea that people don’t want high-quality news is not true” but rather something the owners of news organisations needlessly worry about.

Newspapers and other publications will have to get creative in order to survive, he said, adding that various sources of funding including private donors, philanthropic organisations, and commercial sponsorships could keep smaller newsrooms alive in the future. Even Google and Facebook might come to the rescue: “If they step up to the mark, it’s possible to imagine these huge platforms being a source of funding for these local publications.”

Watch the full interview here:

Appearing in a Zoom interview to discuss her second book, The Scientist and the Spy, author Mara Hvistendahl described a reporting process that took her from China to the Midwestern United States and back as she followed an intriguing legal case that reflected the rise of tensions between the world’s two largest economies. The book recounts the story of a Chinese-born scientist who was caught trying to steal genetically modified corn seeds from a field in Iowa, which led to a two-year FBI investigation and the scientist’s imprisonment.

According to Hvistendahl, an investigative reporter at The Intercept, issues related to trade secrets theft were once handled between companies and never focused on individual employees. In recent years, however, she said both the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice have “posed industrial espionage as some sort of existential threat to the United States,” as the government has prosecuted dozens of cases on behalf of large corporations with the supposed aim of “protecting innovation in America.”

“When you dig into what sort of cases are being brought,” said Hvistendahl, “it is these cases that benefit huge corporations in anti-competitive industries.” As a result, she argued, there are valid concerns about the federal resources that are being spent on such cases. For example, the case that is the focus of her book unfolded in multiple states over two years and involved more than 70 FBI agents as well as lengthy court proceedings.

As industrial espionage has become a flashpoint in U.S.-China relations, Hvistendahl’s reporting also found a worrying trend of racial profiling, with several Chinese scientists being arrested only to later be found innocent. The author said this could be traced back to a secret U.S. government surveillance program that monitored Chinese citizens in the 1960s and 1970s, which she uncovered in the process of doing research for her book.

Reflecting on the process of combining investigative and narrative journalism to weave a thrilling story told from multiple perspectives, Hvistendahl highlighted the merits of painstaking research and rigorous reporting. “This is a complex story that I would not have been able to portray if I had relied only on the court documents and not looked more into the people behind the story,” she said.

Watch the full interview:

President Trump’s ratcheting-up of tensions with China will have lasting effects and won’t be easy to reverse by the incoming Biden administration, according to two Washington-based experts who discussed Sino-U.S. relations in a Zoom event hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong.

“The assessment by the Trump administration of the multitude of challenges that China presents has become widely accepted,” said Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Referring to the notion China’s rise is bad for the U.S., she added, “It’s still not a consensus, but it’s certainly a majority.”

Fellow panelist Tom Orlik, Bloomberg’s chief economist, shared the sentiment. “There’s been a change in tone and approach to international relations under President Trump,” he said. “The diplomatic guardrails have come off.” Orlik, author of China: The Bubble That Never Pops, said even as the Biden administration returns to a more stable style of diplomacy, tension between the two nations isn’t likely to subside because of widespread anti-China sentiment among the American public and China’s continued economic growth, which challenges U.S. dominance.

Nonetheless, the panelists said, the world can expect to see a somewhat different Sino-U.S. relationship unfold during the Biden administration. Noting that President-elect Biden had identified Russia as the greatest threat to the U.S. while naming China a competitor in a recent interview, Glaser predicted that the new president will seek to find areas of cooperation with the world’s second-largest economy.

“Democrats want to engage China on climate change, global health, and North Korea,” she said. Orlik agreed, adding that under Biden, “There’s going to be procedure, meetings, policies that are announced. They will want to cooperate on North Korea and climate change.”

Even as the U.S. seeks more cooperation with China, many challenges lie ahead. “The overlap between business, markets, and national security is bigger than it used to be,” said Orlik. He pointed as an example to Huawei, the Shenzhen-based telecommunications giant that the Trump administration has singled out for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran as well as posing a potential cybersecurity risk and technological challenge to American competitors.

Glaser raised the issue of corporate espionage and the thousands of ongoing cases related to theft of trade secrets in the U.S. “I can’t imagine the Biden administration will want to dismantle this,” she said. “There’s a lot of concern about theft.”

On the question of China’s crackdown on Hong Kong, Orlik cited reports that high-level officials in the Trump administration had considered “the nuclear option” — sanctions on Hong Kong banks and even a strike on the city’s currency peg to the U.S. dollar — but ultimately decided not to do so because it would harm America’s own interests.

“The Trump administration didn’t go with the nuclear option, and Biden won’t,” said Glaser, “but there is more that can be done. I don’t think we’re going to see any reversal.”

The Trump administration will hold power until January 20, though, and the panelists said new executive orders may be issued in the coming weeks that may cause trouble for the Biden administration.

“There have been rumors about more actions and sanctions regarding Hong Kong and Xinjiang,” noted Glaser, adding that Biden could easily reverse those policies with his own executive orders once he enters office. Orlik commented that such a strategy would be put in place to make Biden look weak on China, yet he said for now  “the Trump camp is focused on the election, not other stuff.”

Even if the Trump administration does manage to issue a flurry of executive orders that Biden reverses, Orlik expressed doubts about the potential negative impacts for the new administration. “I question the political cost of undoing executive orders,” he said. “Will the broader public remember them? I wonder if we’re overestimating the risks.”

Watch the full discussion: