The Foreign Correspondents' Club Hong Kong

HKFP continues fight for media access through judicial review

Photos by: HKFP

HKFP Editor-in-Chief Tom Grundy has joined with a group of human rights lawyers to file a judicial review against the government in light of its policy of barring online media outlets from government press conferences and press releases.

In April, Grundy received an offer of assistance from Hong Kong’s Legal Aid Department, according to an editorial on the HKFP website. He is now seeking to link with interested parties and individuals to gather funds to begin proceedings.

HKFP is not alone as other online news organisations face the same problem and all are struggling with with the government to get access since before the site was launched in June last year. The Correspondent, which supports his claim for a judicial review, has followed HKFP’s progress over the year. Its recent return to the crowdfunding arena was less than successful having failed to reach its target by a large margin. However, considerable progress has been made in terms of quantity and quality since HKFP opened for business. Positioning itself as a totally independent – and free – alternative news source, in its first six months HKFP attracted over eight million page views to its website and published more than 2,300 news and comment pieces.

HKFP said that in January this year, the government’s Information Services Department stated that access to its online Government News and Media Information System was only made available “to registered or licensed mass news media organisations which include registered newspapers, periodicals and news agencies, as well as licensed TV and radio stations”.

In a letter to Grundy, it said: “In the absence of a legally binding registration or licensing regime… we are not in a position to distinguish among a wide range of ‘online media’ organisations, nor is it possible for us to grant access to all those that claim to be ‘online media’ for on-the-spot reporting, given the practical arrangements required.”

Separately, on October 27 last year, Grundy was barred from attending a weekly press briefing held with Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying despite presenting his HKFP and Hong Kong Journalists Association credentials.

HKFP regularly covers matters involving the Hong Kong government. Its staff are all qualified, full-time Hong Kong Journalists Association members. HKFP Limited is a registered company with shared office space at Cyberport.

Bill of Rights violation

Photo by: HKFP

It is the view of HKFP’s legal partners that hindering digital news outlets from access to government press conferences and press releases is a breach of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance.

Article 16(2) of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance states: “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any media of his choice.”

A document obtained by HKFP shows that foreign print publications and international broadcasters are among news outlets currently granted access to the online government information system, but digital media outlets are excluded.

‘Archaic’ policy

Despite the fact that the vast majority of Hong Kong’s electorate access their news through the internet, HKFP – as a digital outlet – has been obstructed in its ability to ask questions of public officials or obtain information on public affairs simply because it does not produce a paper edition.

A Senior Counsel with experience in judicial review matters, said that there are “reasonable prospects of success for a judicial review of the policy”.

Other media organisations, or interested parties and individuals, are invited to contact HKFP to assist in gathering funds to challenge the government’s outdated policy.

Banker turned corporate watchdog

Hong Kong is a global finance centre, and as such employs a good number of financial journalists. David Webb is not one of them. He is an activist, not a reporter. But he seems to break a lot of stories. Cathy Holcombe reports.

When Webb first burst into the watchdog scene, in the late 1990s, I was working on the business desk at the South China Morning Post, and on some days he was quoted in almost every other story. I have to confess to arguing against this profligacy of Webb quotes – it’s embarrassing, I said, as if we have no investigative skills of our own.
Yes, well: In a town where business journalists are often stuck on a merry-go-round of press conferences and corporate announcements, they scarcely have time to produce anything other than spot-news reactions.

In contrast, Webb’s close readings of financial statements have uncovered everything from dubious credentials of the management, to unsavoury related-party asset trades, to outright falsehoods in the filings. Webb-site.com keeps track of “bubbles” – companies, usually small caps, that trade well above their underlying value.

Some investigations can take months, if not years. In the early 2000s, Webb noted that a number of “small, naïve companies” were issuing convertible bonds with a “nasty twist” – a floating convertible-price feature. Webb discerned that this feature gave the issuing bank, Credit Suisse First Boston, room to make a killing at the company’s expense, but he waited to see how events played out in the market. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch got in on the game, issuing similar “toxic convertibles”.

Eventually Webb published an exposé, based on a study of 15 companies who had issued the products to raise funds. The bankers made a stunning average profit of 31% on each convertible bond issuance, and the shares of the issuing companies that had subsequently crashed by 30% on average.
These are stories that otherwise simply might not have been picked up by this town’s phalanx of financial journalists. Which raises the question, why?

The swinging door
Financial journalism has long had a tendency towards corporate boosterism, in this town and globally. Part of it is the nature of the readers: perhaps subscribers to magazines such as Forbes enjoy stories that reinforce their pro-business sentiments. Then there is the existential conflict of interest, i.e., the dependency on corporate advertisers, or sales of financial data to corporate clients. In Hong Kong there is the additional issue that many media outlets are now, or traditionally, have been owned by establishment business figures.

As the digital era disrupts media, another threat to the Fourth Estate is economics: declining profits means less available money to underwrite quality, investigative journalism. But what if this digital disruption also makes financial journalists themselves more cautious?

The business writer Michael Lewis, in a recent interview with the British magazine The Spectator, identified the swinging door between the media and the financial sector as a threat to critical financial journalism, just as the swinging door between business and government is a threat to vigilant regulation.

“Journalists are often financially insecure, just as politicians and regulators are often financially insecure – and I’m talking about personally financially insecure,” Lewis said. In his view, this insecurity might explain why major financial media failed to properly investigate the myriad subprime-related shenanigans that led to the 2008 global financial crisis.

In Hong Kong, the door has been swinging for decades, dating back to the 1980s when the investment banking industry began to expand rapidly, and regularly recruited journalists into their ranks.
“The challenge for investment banks was capacity – there simply were not enough qualified and experienced brokers, analysts or corporate finance professionals to meet demand,” says John Mulcahy, a prominent Hong Kong business journalist in the 1980s who later held top research and executive positions at several stockbrokers.

Today the banking industry is more mature – stock market turnover is 70,000% greater than it was in the early 1980s – but many journalists regularly cross over into the banking sector for jobs.
Meanwhile, the role of corporate muckraking is almost single-handedly performed by an ex-banker who moved in the opposite direction.

The ex-banker
Some years ago I interviewed activist David Webb at his residence on Hong Kong Island. It was certainly a nice home, with high ceilings and ample sunlight pouring in through tall windows. But it was not a mansion, and one imagines Webb could live in a mansion.

He had arrived in Hong Kong to work in investment banking in the early 1990s, a time when even knuckle-draggers could make silly money in the business. Smart foreigners, on the other hand, could ascend to heights of insane riches.

Instead, Webb stepped off the corporate ladder about 20 years ago. He puts in a few hours a day as a private investor, and donates the rest of his productivity to his role as a watchdog on corporate and economic governance.

His output is prolific and ranges from careful examinations of the financials of penny stock companies, to purist – some would say priggish – interpretations of the Basic Law on the Hong Kong government’s taxation policies.

“Banking paid me well, but I’ve had far more fun as a private investor and activist,” Webb says, adding that he has been very successful investing in relatively well-governed undervalued small-caps for the last 21 years.

“That process is like being an expert mechanic shopping in a second-hand car lot with no warranties, and even worse, with drivers (controlling shareholders) attached. All the cars are discounted for the risk of lemons, so if you can avoid the lemons, and pick the cars that have been well-maintained by careful drivers, then you do well.”

Moreover, Webb believes it is his duty to do what he does: “If you have achieved financial security and have expertise in some area, then it seems almost selfish not to apply that expertise to the public good.”

One inspiration is George Soros, who in his younger days combined “investing and advocacy in a spectacular way”, for example, helping to bring down the Iron Curtain by funding photocopiers to help distribute information in his native Hungary in the 1980s. If Webb makes enough money in investing, he hopes to establish Webb-site as an independent foundation that can survive him and to expand its role in defending and advancing civil liberties and free markets in Hong Kong and China.

Recently, Webb’s activism has been aimed at defending Hong Kong’s traditions of freedom of speech and information. In January he spoke at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club about his failed efforts to appeal against a ruling on privacy issues which requires Webb-site.com to remove from its extensive archives past court cases, such as reports of bankruptcies, litigation or convictions. Webb argued that it was in the public interest to make this information available, but the Administrative Appeals Board ruled against him.

Hong Kong’s ruling on privacy issues is in line with the European court’s ruling on Google searches. In other words, it is perhaps another example of a China-related clampdown on transparency and free speech. But this “right to forget” issue is hitting Hong Kong at time when civil traditions are already under threat from Beijing.

“The recent case of the book publishers disappearing from Hong Kong and Thailand without officially ‘leaving’ is very worrying, and the fact that Hong Kong’s government took weeks to obtain the most basic information from mainland counterparts makes it look powerless and highly subordinated to mainland authority,” says Webb.

“There is also increasing mainland influence in traditional Hong Kong media, either by outright ownership or by pressure on advertisers (particularly those with mainland operations) not to support Hong Kong media who are critical of the mainland government.”

Graduates may face difficult personal choices. “If they work for critical media, then travel to the mainland may be difficult, fearing arrest on charges that their critical stories violated national security laws. They may also have concern for any family members in the mainland, and after the recent publisher disappearances, they may even be looking over their own shoulder while in Hong Kong,” says Webb.

In his view, this makes it all the more important that new, independent online media are able to fill the gap, “but they will face the same financial pressures.”

Indeed, the journalism profession is increasingly turning to non-profit or subsidised models. And the Fourth Estate may find itself more and more dependent on outsiders and activists, like Webb, to break the stories they can’t. After all, Webb left banking because he could afford to; this is the inverse of the journalism equation, where many leave because they cannot afford to stay.

Hong Kong’s Future

Sir David Tang gave an amusing, erudite and at times inspirational speech before a full house at the FCC on what has happened to Hong Kong, where it might go and what needs to be done.

David Tang fired both barrels at the performance of the Chief Executive CY Leung in his latest policy address as well as his overall leadership qualities. After regaling us with a visiting Martian’s view of the address, Tang called it “a silent contortion of the truth”.

“Does anyone here really believe that the government, our government, fosters harmony or shares prosperity?” he asked. “Does the government itself believe that it fosters harmony and shares prosperity? I believe these words are patronising and condescending at best, and at worst, meaningless.”

In any event, in the policy address he said there was “not a half-scintilla” on the Umbrella Movement, “perhaps the single most significant political event in Hong Kong since the riots in 1966”. Nor was there a mention on the defeat within LegCo of the introduction of universal suffrage for the election of the chief executive.

In the entire two hours spent delivering his address, Tang said, the Chief Executive “did not give the slightest hint of an amoeba of political or social dissatisfaction, yet a great deal of dissatisfaction is prevalent. It was no surprise, therefore, that even before he began his address, four members of LegCo were removed for protesting against his favourite past-time of sweeping what he regards as rotten political dust under the carpet.

“The supreme paradox for me is the opening line of his address: ‘Since taking office, the current term government has focused its efforts on promoting democracy,’ so CY Leung smugly said.
“Whoever wrote that for the first sentence for the Chief Executive, if he himself did not write it, must be a comedian; or perhaps a monkey who accidentally typed up those words on a typewriter. What it all means to me is the disingenuousness of our Chief Executive and government, and the contempt with which they hold us, the citizens of Hong Kong.”

However, Tang asked, should we have expected anything else? “After all, throughout the Umbrella Movement, our Chief Executive steadfastly refused to meet the protesters. We should remember that even Li Peng, the hardcore, hardline Chinese Premier at the time [Tiananmen in 1989] received [protest leader] Wu’er Kaishi, and what’s more, in full view on national television.
“By comparison, our Chief Executive hid behind the azaleas at Government House and pushed out that diminutive figure of Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, who fluffed around with absurd preconditions and insisted on meeting the students behind closed doors.

“You understand how parochial we seem, already.

“It all further means that our Chief Executive does not have the bottle to confront difficult issues, yet that is precisely the one quality that we should demand in our leader.

“We certainly don’t want one who totally ignored the heat of our political and social conditions and instead spent half of his speech pontificating on the woolly symbols of ‘One Belt, One Road’, which was mentioned 48 times. Quite apart from the embarrassing unctuousness towards the Chinese president, what on earth would an ordinary citizen of Hong Kong care or understand about One Belt, One Road?

“I even doubt that a single tycoon in Hong Kong could name more than two countries on the original Silk Road that was the inspiration for One Belt, One Road. Is our Chief Executive really trying to push Hong Kong trade, and our financial services, across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq… and inexorably into the heart of the terrifying Islamic State?
“Borat might have been able to get away with it, with humour – but hardly our sombre Chief Executive with any degree of seriousness.”

Wanted: a strong leader
Tang said that if he was to hold out any hope for a better Hong Kong, “I would first wish for a much stronger, and much more effective Chief Executive. I know this sounds [like] self-evident truth, but that is what we need to focus on.

“By which I mean someone who would at least appear to represent the people of Hong Kong, and not fearful of relaying to the Chinese authority those views which are considered to be discordant music to the ears in the north.

“But the most preponderant misreading on the part of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong is to second guess what the Chinese government does not want to hear. These furtive considerations do great damage to the status of the Chief Executive, because even before asking, he has turned himself into a puppet on a string, dancing obsequiously to the tunes and echoes of Zhongnanhai.
“I would even wish for a Chief Executive who was cunning enough to persuade the Chinese government to hear openly the grievances of Hong Kong, while knowing full well that they would fall on deaf ears. But at least under these open circumstances, we will obtain an airing of what those grievances are, then sooner or later people will become conscious for the need of compromise.

“And therein lies the secret of civilisation: divergent views being brought closer together openly, through peaceful, intellectual and intelligent negotiations. That, in a nutshell, is what Hong Kong is crying out for. A mediator, or a group of mediators who could bring those pan-democrats and the stiff establishment around the same table and begin the process of some kind of reconciliation.
“As a citizen of Hong Kong, born and bred below Lion Rock, I was really sad to see the anger – or should I say Tourette’s – displayed by those well-meaning legislators who were ejected from the chamber in front of an ossified face of our Chief Executive.

“These tribal confrontations exemplify deep bitterness and resentment, and precisely represent the fundamental and symptomatic illnesses of our territory.

“They are similar to the rifts between the Shiite and the Sunni, the Arabs and the Jews, and the North and South Koreans. But there is so much more hope of a lasting ceasefire in our case because we have, thankfully, at least not shed any real blood. Not yet.

“Indeed, the Chinese authority could simply transform our entire livelihood tomorrow by becoming a mediator of the two opposing sides. The two sides must meet, they must sit down opposite each other; they must start talking. They must carry a modicum of goodwill on each of their parts.

“It is only when the stinging palpitations of our political polarisations are diffused, that we can once again return to a marvellous and civilised legislature that has served Hong Kong well, before its fragmentations and the damaging of the fabric of our society before our own eyes.

“If we’re not careful and simply let the sour enemies sit inert, in stalemate across from each other on the chamber floor at LegCo, then we will be throwing away what we have managed to build, totally against the odds, a solid and burnished rock that was once considered merely as barren.

“Churchill was supposed to have said “democracy is the worst kind of government, except for those others which have been tried.” I should like to think that Hong Kong is the worst kind of place in which to live, except for those others which have been tried.

“My point here is that, given all the problems we have, with a deteriorating administration which half confesses itself to have a legislature that is becoming ungovernable and losing confidence among the majority of the population by the day, with a Chief Executive whose popularity is at a historic low, we must cling on to Hong Kong as our home, but we cannot afford to stand by our status quo.

“Our government has been growing apart from the people of Hong Kong and they must anticipate trouble. Already, there are over one million people in Hong Kong who are trapped by poverty, and they cannot be too pleased about the government. It is simply invidious that in a prosperous community such as Hong Kong, over 15% of our population should be living below the breadline.
“It is a shameful state, scandalous if you ask me. Then there was the Umbrella Movement, which clearly demonstrated the resolution of many ordinary people taking real democratic power seriously, and their dissatisfaction can only be increased by the defeat of the universal suffrage motion in LegCo.

“Then the disturbing case of Lee Po and his colleagues and those hawkers openly branded as separatists by the Liaison Office. To compound our problems, the dwindling numbers of visitors from the mainland, financial oscillations in the markets, not to mention the growing number of the aged against a falling number of our workforce, the umpteen cases of abduction in the mainland about which we hear very little, the dark appearances of triads at demonstrations, the thorough incompetence of the government in creating a proper cultural anchor in the city…

“There are many more things which need fixing, and most of them could not be achieved given the standoff between the pan-democrats representing the majority of ordinary people, and the establishment, so-called, hugging most of our somnambulant tycoons, and that elephantine Communist Party in China.

“Thank God, thank God we still have a decent judicial system and a fairly uncorrupted community and genuine freedom in Hong Kong. This holy trinity – which is what I call it – remains the pride of Hong Kong people.

“You think Shanghai, say, with her mainland judicial system and corruption, and lack of freedom, could overtake Hong Kong as China’s premier city? You would have to be utterly insane, and stupid.

“Ergo, we must hang on to this holy trinity of a decent judicial system and uncorrupted community and genuine freedom until the bitter end… or 2047 at least. In my moments of fantasy, I even think Hong Kong could play a vital role in shaping the future of China.

“Why else would 50 million mainlanders come flooding through Hong Kong every year?

“It’s because of our holy trinity. This would make the seven million of us in Hong Kong the greatest and freest de facto Chinese diaspora, which in turn could change the course of Chinese history in our lifetime.”

Other subjects that came up during the Q&A include:

Outside influence on student protesters. Maybe there was a tiny amount of support by outsiders, “but if you thought in our city full of bright, loyal young people require a conspiracy outside of Hong Kong to support a movement – that was genuinely moving – I think that is far-fetched in itself. So, in a nutshell, no.

I have to tell you there are serious and influential people I know – who don’t live in Hong Kong but own a lot of Hong Kong – who keep telling me, oh, it’s the Americans or CIA. I think that is absolute balderdash.

Should Britain support Hong Kong more. At this time there is no point blaming Britain. In fact when Britain left Hong Kong it left the territory intact and did not take one cent… and it even paid rent for its consulate building. And you couldn’t have a greater champion than the last governor, Chris Patten, in trying to install a system of government or politics that would maximise the possibility of Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong.”

The bookseller who eventually emerged in Guangzhou after some weeks. “The fact that he left his passport behind must have meant that somebody fairly high up in authority managed to get him abducted into China. And, of course, this indeed is a very serious matter – not only about the breach of the Joint Declaration, but as a fundamental principle of the one country, two systems. It is essential that we stand fast on this one. It sets an extremely bad example.

“I have heard that the Chinese authorities have now told the civil servants who carry out these sorts of things not to come to Hong Kong any more as they are slightly edgy about the recent bad press.

“I know one or two friends who were supposed to go to China for questions but decided not to and asked to meet in Hong Kong instead. They have now been told to bring a solicitor or policemen with them to feel safe. In a way the bookseller incident has defused that wind of bad change, which I hope will carry on.”

Tang talk goes viral

Not surprisingly, given the frankness of some of the views expressed, David Tang’s FCC talk ignited a minor firestorm on social media. A recording of the presentation posted on the FCC’s YouTube channel racked up nearly 10,000 views in the first day after posting, an exceptionally high number, with over 300 ‘likes’ (versus a mere three thumbs-down).

On Twitter, as well, Hong Kong watchers and correspondents were quick to pick up and swap highlights of the event, with Tang’s comments on CY Leung’s leadership seeming to gain the most traction.

Tang’s talk even made it on to the normally relatively staid LinkedIn professional network, with an executive from Invest Hong Kong calling attention to the “full house” at the Club and Tang’s championing of Hong Kong’s “holy trinity” — an independent judiciary, lack of corruption and genuine freedoms.

The online media reaction was mixed. A Coconuts Hong Kong article on the presentation that contained a link to the full text of Tang’s speech was shared across hundreds of Facebook pages, while a debate raged in the comment section of the South China Morning Post’s story on the event.

Tang was alternately hailed as a “wise man” and “one of the few public figures in Hong Kong with any guts”, while others derided him as a “wannabe politician” and a “tabloid celebrity”. Regardless how they view Tang’s at times scathing opinions, few would disagree that the event once again highlighted the FCC as a key venue for dialogue on the city, and a regular host to some of its leading personalities.

Link to Coconuts story: http://hongkong.coconuts.co/2016/02/19/shanghai-tang-founder-slams-cy-leung-govt-beijing-speech-hong-kongs-future
SCMP: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1913976/even-li-peng-met-tiananmen-protesters-says-shanghai-tang

The yellow umbrellas are back, despite pressure from Chinese officials

The now ubiquitous yellow umbrellas surged around the Hong Kong government offices to mark the first anniversary of the pro-democracy Occupy movement which shut down central Hong Kong for 79 days last year.

While Occupy failed to achieve its goals, the silent rally on September 28 showed that political activism was was alive and well in the city.

In the build-up to the rally, China typically unleashed a rash of tired political rhetoric warning Hong Kong of dark days ahead. Readers of last year’s September/October and November/December issues of The Correspondent will remember Beijing’s almost daily threats about the protests.

First, we were surprised to hear that Hong Kong’s economy “lags” behind regional rivals Singapore and Macau because Hong Kongers have failed to “de-colonise” after the 1997 British handover. This was from Chen Zuo’er, former deputy director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office.

This startling assertion has, unusually, been met with a string of rebuttals from Hong Kong officials and Beijing-friendly politicians.

Chen’s remarks – which appear to reflect concerns that the central government’s authority was being challenged in Hong Kong – have also ignited debate on whether they might presage new hardline policies towards the city.

A few days before this China’s top man in Hong Kong, Liaison Office director Zhang Xiaoming caused alarm when he said that separation of powers does not exist in Hong Kong, and that the Chief Executive enjoys “a special legal status that transcends the executive, legislature and judiciary”.

Not to be left out of the fun, an anti-Occupy group attacked the leaders and participants of the Occupy movement, saying the activists had failed to “show repentance” over their conduct.

“I have not seen leaders and participants of the Occupy movement sincerely repent what they had done,” said Stanley Ng Chau-pei, spokesman of the pro-Beijing Alliance for Peace and Democracy. People should not forget the negative consequences of the protests, Ng said.

While he admitted that he has no idea at the moment on how Beijing can improve relations with Hong Kong, Ng – who is also chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions and a deputy to China’s National People’s Congress – said people should not put the cart before the horse by blaming Beijing for what happened last year.

Meanwhile, during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the US, Scholarism convenor Joshua Wong, Occupy co-founder Benny Tai, and Democratic Party founder Martin Lee were honoured at the pro-democracy and freedom monitoring organisation Freedom House’s 75th anniversary event in Washington.

Lee said he has yet to see any evidence of Xi pushing for human rights reforms in China. He said that local students still support “one country, two systems” and are not advocating for Hong Kong to be independent. He also said that the central government should keep their promise and implement universal suffrage in Hong Kong.

Joshua Wong said that a list of the names of 200 Scholarism members were made public after their computers were hacked, causing 90% of them to be refused entry to the mainland and Macau, which could affect their future. In May, Wong was denied entry to Malaysia by immigration authorities.