The legacy of Louis Cha, Hong Kong media magnate and acclaimed kung-fu fiction writer, was discussed by the last person to interview him.

Nick Frisch discussed Louis Cha’s interlaced legacies in media, politics, and literature. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

Cha, the founding editor of Ming Pao Daily and chairman of Ming Pao Group, died in 2018. Nick Frisch, media fellow at Yale Law School and Asian studies doctoral candidate at Yale’s graduate school, interviewed the man known as the ‘Master of Kung-Fu Novels’ in 2014 for the New Yorker.

Cha was born in 1924 in a town along the Yangtze River to a family who for generations had worked for the imperial rulers. Frisch revealed that the family was held in high regard until the 18th Century, when an ancestor who had inadvertently offended the Emperor with a poorly constructed poem, had his severed head paraded on a pike. The family lived in an upscale compound but were forced to flee when the Japanese invaded during the Second World War. Cha was already living in Hong Kong in 1949 when his father was identified as an enemy of the Communist Party during the Communist Revolution and executed.

Working as a journalist and scriptwriter, Cha began producing kung-fu fantasy stories which appeared in newspapers. They were an instant hit. In 1959 he founded Ming Pao Daily and continued to write his successful fiction under the name Jin Yong while at the same time often writing news stories and editorials for the newspaper. Cha’s fiction, which was banned in China, often mirrored the political events of the time, and his editorials frequently criticised Mao Zedong’s Communist Party, earning him widespread respect as a commentator.

However, a softening in his political attitudes when Deng Xiaoping took power made some question his motives, particularly after the leader lifted the ban on the books of Cha and his contemporaries. As a supporter of the Communist Party, Cha became more politically active and participated in drafting the terms for Hong Kong’s 1997 handover.

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New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger spoke of the dangers facing journalists around the world since President Donald Trump’s attacks on the press.

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China’s efforts to quash feminism have in fact galvanised the movement as women across the country choose not to have children in the face of a government propaganda campaign to try to boost failing birth rates, according to a new book.

Author Leta Hong Fincher lifted the lid on China’s feminist movement when she appeared at the FCC. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

The male-dominated Communist Party sees the control of women and their bodies as key in preventing social unrest and maintaining stability across the country, said Leta Hong Fincher, author of Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China.

Since 2015, the Chinese government has been cracking down on feminism, beginning with the jailing of five feminist activists for 37 days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre, not least because President Xi Jinping was about to co-host a UN conference in New York on women’s rights. Activists inundated social media with #FreetheFive messages and Hillary Clinton even spoke out on their behalf, tweeting: “Xi hosting a meeting on women’s rights at the UN while persecuting feminists? Shameless.”

However, despite apparently bowing to international pressure the clampdown goes on, most recently with the case of Yue Xin, the #MeToo activist and recent graduate of Peking University who has been missing – presumed detained – since trying to unionise workers two months ago.

“I would argue that the subjugation of women is absolutely key to Communist rule, exerting control over the entire population particularly in the last few decades with the advent of market reforms,” Hong Fincher said. “The government sees women primarily as reproductive tools and so they need to be confined to the home, to be baby breeders, raise children, take care of the elderly and tame the violent urges of men.”

Women in China are tired of the sexism they face in their daily lives, she said, and many wanted to pursue careers and further education rather than marry and have families. And more alarmingly for the government, they are willing to stand up for themselves.

Hong Fincher said the #MeToo movement was also spreading across China despite growing internet censorship and a lack of press freedom. Hong Fincher predicted that the crackdown on feminism would intensify as China’s economy slows and the workforce shrinks due to failing birth rates.

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The dogged investigation into the biggest and most far-reaching corruption scandal in recent history was revealed by the lone journalist who relentlessly pursued the story in the face of intimidation.

Clare Rewcastle Brown, the journalist whose probing of 1MDB corruption became a world scoop. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

Clare Rewcastle Brown worked for years on the scoop that exposed the 1Malaysia Development Berhad, a government-run strategic development fund designed to help improve the country’s infrastructure, as nothing more than a slush fund directly channelling millions of dollars into the accounts of President Najib Razak, tycoon Jho Low and other officials.

The exposé had repercussions around the world as it emerged that top banks and lawyers had facilitated the movement of money through their institutions, creaming massive profits for themselves.

Yet, despite figures like Low “operating in plain sight”, no news organisations were picking up the story, said Rewcastle Brown, author of the book The Sarawak Report: The Inside Story of the 1MDB Exposé.

“Why was that? Not just the cost factor of dedicating investigative journalists to long and expensive stories… the diplomatic and commercial issues – big outfits didn’t want to get kicked out of KL, as I was told on one occasion.

“With global news to cover and budgets depleted, newsrooms are simply forced to avoid taking on the sorts of targets who can afford lawyers who cost them money to defend their journalism. And for criminals in the business of ripping off the public, it simply is a business expense necessary to shut up comment and scrutiny.

“During the 1MDB exposes I watched it happen time and again as news organisations were silenced by big gun lawyers brought in to argue the toss by people who are now thankfully facing prosecution,” she said.

As she began to follow more leads in her investigation, Rewcastle Brown found herself at the centre of a fake news campaign on social media funded by the corrupt people she was examining, trying to smother the story she was working on.

Thanks to her determined coverage on her website, The Sarawak Report, the story was eventually picked up by international news organisations and became a global scandal that led to the fall of Malaysia’s political regime as well as officials and corrupt businessmen associated with abusing the fund.

And the repercussions of the story continue, with new arrests and charges making headlines every week.

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