Joyce Lau talks to four working mothers in the demanding world of journalism.

My email exchange with BBC correspondent Juliana Liu was typical. I had wanted to sit down with her, preferably over a spot of tea, to talk about the pros and cons of being a working mother in the demanding field of journalism. But we were also both stuck in the hospital with sick children.

Juliana Liu in full bloom.

My three-year-old Emilie woke up that morning with a bright-red, full-body rash at a time that Scarlet Fever, of all things, was making its rounds in local kindergartens. Thankfully, it turned out to be something else.

Liu was in another hospital with her son Philip, aged four, who had a frightening bacterial infection. She spent several nights in the children’s ward while her husband Marcel did the hospital “day shifts.” Their two other children – Laura, aged 2, and Matthias, an infant born in late July, 2016 – were cared for by nannies at home.

True to form, Liu replied to my interview request first thing the next morning – typing away at 7 a.m. before her kids were up.

Juliana Liu

Liu, a member of the FCC Board, is the BBC reporter famous (perhaps infamous) for running out with her big, pregnant belly to do live reports on hard-hitting Hong Kong news.

“The Lamma ferry disaster happened when I was hugely pregnant, and I started filing overnight, around the clock for several days,” she said of the 2012 maritime tragedy.

The Umbrella Movement started when I was 34 weeks along, and being tear-gassed was not at all fun,” she said. “The police, protesters and my colleagues were much more horrified than I was. My doctor said the chances of me going into early labour was extremely low, so I was able to keep working as usual

“The Umbrella Movement started when I was 34 weeks along, and being tear-gassed was not at all fun,” she said. “The police, protesters and my colleagues were much more horrified than I was. My doctor said the chances
of me going into early labour was extremely low, so I was able to keep working as usual.”

Juliana Liu, right, with Angie Lau.

Liu has typically taken four to six months of maternity leave for each of her three children.

“Being pregnant means I was travelling less for work (but still travelling) and having kids meant I had to be much more efficient, too,” she said. “It’s definitely been challenging when it came to dealing with breaking news.”

Like many working parents here, Liu and I rely on foreign domestic workers who provide the affordable home childcare that allows Hong Kong parents to pursue their careers.

“I work with my husband and nannies as a team,” Liu said.

She brings her kids in on the weekends to be coddled by the FCC staff. “They love their Club aunties and uncles.”

Tara Joseph

Tara Joseph, who until recently was both a Reuters correspondent and FCC president, said she was “lucky” to have benefitted from a British maternity policy that gave her a full year off for each child.

But she was still honest about motherhood’s inevitable impact on job opportunities. “If I were not a parent I would have moved more frequently and regularly, taken up assignments in different countries,” she said. “I had to, and still have to, temper my expectations.”

Joseph said that becoming a mother “affected my whole being”.

If I were not a parent I would have moved more frequently and regularly, taken up assignments in different countries

“Being around young people has opened my eyes and mind to many ideas and thoughts,” she said. “Children are not just little things that keep you busy – they are creative beings and represent the future – so I really learn a lot from how they view the world.”

Tara Joseph.

When Joseph debated running for re-election at the Club, she asked her two children, aged 10 and 14, for their opinions.

“They love the place and like to see me involved,” she said. “They will grow up with all sorts of memories of the Club: The Christmas gingerbread wall at reception, the staff at the Main Bar, the pictures on the wall in the bunker, and playing hangman over lunch on the yellow placemats at the weekend.”

Being a mother did not change her commitment as president; but it did affect how long she lingered at the Main Bar. “We think it’s important for us to sit together as a family as often as possible,” she said. “I usually go for a drink and a chat at the club in the evening and leave by 8, which is tough!”

Cammy Yiu

Cammy Yiu, editor-in-chief of CULTURE magazine, is a former FCC Board member who sits on several Club committees. Her two daughters, aged 14 and 23, are both products of the notoriously strict local school system, and fluently bilingual in Cantonese and English. “The local system is tough – but so are my girls,” she said.

When Yiu had her first daughter in the early ‘90s, she took the standard 10-week maternity leave. “It’s a real tragedy there isn’t better for Hong Kong working women,” she said. “It wasn’t enough. She was just a wee babe when I had to go back to work.”

For a decade she worked “crazy Hong Kong hours”. And when her older daughter was 6, Yiu enrolled in the top-ranked Kellogg-HKUST executive MBA programme.

Cammy Yiu.Photo by: Ingrid Piper

“I juggled being a mom and a wife among all that. It wasn’t easy,” she said. “But my husband supported me 110%. He took over most of the ‘mum’ duties during the time.”

Yiu decided to change her life dramatically when she was pregnant with her second child; she quit her job and stayed home for a year-and-a-half. “I had the most wonderful time looking forward to the arrival of No. 2,” she said. “I stayed home to be with her.”

Like many working moms, Yiu is now self-employed. “I started my own company so I could have control over my professional and personal time,” she said.

She does not bring her children to the FCC very often. “No,” she joked. “The Club is where I get away from my kids!”

Angie Lau

Angie Lau is a star anchor at Bloomberg TV and president of the Asia chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA). A former FCC Board member, she is still involved in the Club’s communications committee.

She is expecting her first child this January, and is planning on taking four or five months off after the birth. Like many expectant mothers, she deals with the awkwardness of answering questions by well-meaning if misguided outsiders about her post-baby plans.

“When a fellow [AAJA] member mentioned we should start thinking of succession plan for my role as president when I go on maternity, I was surprised,” she said. “But I chalk that up to good intentions.”

Meanwhile, Lau has just finished putting together the AAJA Christmas party and is now organising an AAJA conference for next May.

Joyce Lau

There’s a photo of me in The New York Times’ Hong Kong newsroom – sitting on a swiveling chair in front of two computer screens, smiling at a pudgy toddler on my knee.

For a while, I felt very proud of this photo. It made me feel like a member of Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean-In” generation, a woman who balanced work and motherhood through sheer force of will.

After the birth of my first child, I had tried to “lean in” Sandberg-style – rushing home after work to get home before my baby fell asleep. I was exhausted. I leaned in so far, I fell over

But to be frank, the photo was somewhat staged. It was a cameo appearance by the kids at my workplace, and they were swiftly sent home in a taxi with their nanny. In all my years at the Times, I have never actually edited an article with a child on my lap.

After the birth of my first child, I had tried to “lean in” Sandberg-style – rushing home after work to get home before my baby fell asleep. I was exhausted. I leaned in so far, I fell over.

So after my second child, I left my job and became a part-time freelancer. Today, my “office” is the sunny spot at the Club Table, where I write my stories. But when I feel like going home, I can.

Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump (L) and Marco Rubio (R) following the CBS News Republican Presidential Debate in Greenville, South Carolina, February 13, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSON

Hong Kong’s seven million-plus people are not political refugees and don’t want to be. They are nearly all Chinese but, unlike their Taiwan cousins, do not have a freely elected leader who can phone an incoming US president. America was once committed to protecting these people’s rights and democratic wishes as a matter of policy. What are the chances this might be policy again?

Hong Kong’s current distress offers Donald Trump an opportunity to reflect on his China policy and to showcase what it’s going to mean. The timing is opportune. The bipartisan US-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992 committed America to support Hong Kong’s freedoms and democratic path. That law has expired. But Senators Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton, seeking to revive it, have recently reintroduced the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. If passed, it would oblige the administration to hold China accountable for upholding its promises to Hong Kong.

Will Trump support it? He has pledged a tough line against China in economic areas. And he has accepted the controversial phone call from Taiwan’s president. With Hong Kong, he has a chance to show what, beyond pre-dawn tweeting, he is willing to countenance when it comes to dealing with China.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive CY Leung, is using every available tool – including the courts – to crack down on dissenters known as localists, a few of whom have the audacity to imagine independence from China.

There is some sympathy for the localists, largely due to the unpopularity of the Leung government. In October, while a half-dozen localists won seats in Legco, others might have done so but were blocked from getting on the ballot. Beijing is now energetically involved in banning separatism from political discourse; CY says it shouldn’t even be discussed in schools.

The localists’ demands touch the Chinese Communist Party’s third rail. No one may dream of independence. Not the Buddhists of Tibet and Inner Mongolia, not the Moslems of Xinjiang, not the Taiwanese who democratically elected President Tsai Ing-wen, and certainly not the residents of Hong Kong, the former British colony.

Hong Kong’s current distress offers Donald Trump an opportunity to reflect on his China policy and to showcase what it’s going to mean

Like most people here, the localists want real democracy, but see little chance while under Beijing’s thumb. Some localists hedge, urging more autonomy somewhere down the road. A few insist on independence.

When the two pro-independence candidates won Legco seats and used their swearing-in ceremony for anti-China political theatre, it offended many Chinese, including pro-democracy parties. The Hong Kong government legally challenged the validity of their oaths and, while the matter was in the judge’s hands, China issued an interpretation of the Basic Law that effectively left the court no discretion.

Armed with the constitutional win, the administration has now targeted four more lawmakers on the same grounds. If successful, pro-government forces would have enough votes to ram through rule changes and legislation that pro-democracy lawmakers oppose.

The crackdown is timely for CY, who faces re-election in March from a 1,200-member body dominated by China’s choices. Though his popularity ratings are abysmal, his uncompromising stance against the Umbrella Movement protests two years ago, and his robust anti-localist campaign now, have endeared him among hardliners.

Meanwhile, China’s President Xi Jinping has launched an anti-corruption war that is a purge by any other name. Aiming at more than moral rectification, it is a broad effort to corral military, political and economic power that was allowed to disperse and develop at lower levels of government during the decentralisation of China’s economy. But what spurred China’s wealth boom also helped develop regional power centres that, unchecked, could threaten the central government.

Xi and his allies are fighting for re-centralisation of national power. They have taken to heart an old revolutionary song: “Without the Communist Party, there is no new China.”

By streamlining the party’s membership (88 million out of 1.3 billion people, the world’s largest political party), eliminating ideological rivals, reorganising the military along fighting lines instead of geographical units, and sidelining anybody in the way, Xi’s faction is condensing control. Keeping the party tight and the power centralised are keys to retaining control of China.

No surprise, then, that any mention of federalism is forbidden. The line is clear: China is a unitary state and all power flows from the centre and no power is retained by any lower entity. The message is hammered home: Any authority you enjoy flows from Beijing’s… and don’t assume it lasts. What the centre giveth, it also taketh away.

Hong Kong is sternly reminded regularly that the Basic Law’s freedoms and other guarantees –  as a national law – are gifted by Beijing. Hong Kong people are warned daily that one cannot have liberties, greater than any enjoyed on the mainland, while rejecting China. The threat is explicit: you will not be allowed to live under a second system if you reject the one country.

Written by Francis Moriarty