2015-04-09
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A woman distributes newspapers in Hong Kong, Feb. 13, 2014.
AFP
The recent takeover by Beijing’s representative office in Hong Kong of a key publishing house has sparked fears of a widening ideological assault by the ruling Chinese Communist Party on freedom of expression in the former British colony, political commentators said.
The Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in Hong Kong, which formally represents Beijing in the semiautonomous city, recently acquired control of Sino United Publishing Limited, local media reported this week.
Next Magazine quoted official Chinese documents as a source for the acquisition of the company, which wholly owns three major bookstore chains in the city, Joint Publishing HK, Chung Hwa Book Co. and the Commercial Press.
The liaison office already owns a number of Chinese-language media, including the Wen Wei Po, Ta Kung Pao and Hong Kong Commercial Daily newspapers, as well as the online Orange News.
The move has given Beijing control of more than 80 percent of the publishing industry in Hong Kong, which was promised a high degree of autonomy and the continuation of its existing freedoms under the terms of the city’s 1997 handover to China, media reports said.
Lai’s Apple Daily newspaper accused the Liaison Office of violating the territory’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, which states that Chinese government departments may not “interfere in … affairs which [Hong Kong] administers on its own in accordance with the law.”
The news comes after media reports last month that the three booksellers owned by the chain are banned from selling any publications related to “Hong Kong independence,” an oblique reference to last year’s pro-democracy Occupy Central movement.
According to the Economic Journal newspaper, independent publishers have already been hit hard by the new development.
Carmen Kwong, editor-in-chief of Up Publications, told the paper that her company had hundreds of books returned by Sino United Publishing through its three bookstores.
Sino United has also rejected books by Up Publications that are not even political in subject matter, Kwong was quoted as saying.
According to Hong Kong independent book publisher and current affairs commentator Wu Yisan, the publishing deal runs counter to the principle of “one country, two systems,” under which Beijing negotiated the return of Hong Kong from British rule.
“These three bookshops did once sell a small number of anti-communist books, but now the Liaison Office has moved in to control them via a shell company, probably to tighten its control over Hong Kong generally,” Wu said.
“[They will be able to exclude] so-called forbidden books, or books about Occupy Central,” he said.
“They have stepped up their control over the freedom of expression and of publication,” Wu said.
“We are getting further and further away from one country, two systems, and from Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong.”
Wu warned that the move would further anger an already alienated Hong Kong population.
“It’s an extremely stupid thing to do, because all they will do is incite further opposition among Hong Kong people,” he said.
