Hong Kong was successful as a business center before July 1997. Won't that continue despite a press that even with changes is less restrictive than, say, Singapore's?
What does the status of freedom of the press have to do with democracy in Hong Kong? With increasing restrictions on the press and quashing of each hint of a "Beijing Spring" in China? With the confident moves toward more and more press freedom in Taiwan?
How you answer these questions depends on who you are and where you are.
If you are Milton Friedman, your position is that "one country, two systems" won't work and you have told Deng Xiaoping as much in your last meeting before he died. Particularly won't work when it comes to freedom of expression and freedom of the press.
If you are Chris Patten, former Governor of Hong Kong, you feel pretty much the same way, with the added caveat that the West should not kowtow to China on human rights, including freedom of the press, just because it is thought that China will someday be a great power.
If you are Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, you are unequivocal in your support of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, particularly its Article 19 on press freedom:
"ARTICLE 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
And you endorse the Charter for a Free Press which sets out 10 principles for free, independent, news media.
"The only test that matters (is) the choice of every people to know more or less, to be heard or to be silenced, to stand up or kneel down," the UN leader said in an October 1998 London speech.
If you are James H. Ottaway, World Press Freedom Committee Chairman, or a member of the Freedom Forum or numerous other organizations fighting for press freedom you know that the lack of knowledge is more detrimental among nations never the opposite.
This book would be a lot easier to write if there were unanimity on the question of Hong Kong's decline in press freedom specifically and the greater question of universal press freedom.
