According to Vines, most proprietors are not only averse to upsetting China; they are only too pleased to align themselves with the incoming sovereign power. Moreover, most of the key owners of the Hong Kong media were signed up in some capacity and advisers to the Chinese government. Sir Run Shaw, the boss of TVB, Robert Kuok, the Chairman of the South China Morning Post and a major TVB shareholder, Sally Aw, who runs the Sing Tao group, and other media barons were in the front lines of business leaders who turned up in Beijing for appointment to a variety of posts, all of which carried the requirement to support the Chinese government.
It should be mentioned that the close affinity between media barons and governments is hardly unique to Hong Kong. Some of the world's key media players, such as Rupert Murdoch, and nearly all the media bosses in Japan and Korea, are very close to the governments on whose affairs their newspapers and radio stations are supposed to be reporting. In Italy matters were taken a step further with the election of a media baron to the post of Prime Minister. In wartime Britain Lord Beaverbrook, the most influential newspaper proprietor of his day, served in Mr. Churchill's cabinet.
Those who fail to toe the new line coming from Beijing are quick to feel the pressure. Before the handover of power officials from the New China News Agency (Xinhua), which acted as Beijing's control center in the colony, were quick to call up editors and proprietors if they disliked the coverage being carried in their publications. Those seen as unresponsive to persuasion were simply frozen out. Thus the entire staff of Jimmy Lai's Apple Daily newspaper are routinely banned from covering meetings of Chinese organizations.
China is also in a position to exercise direct commercial pressure over newspapers by placing a ban on advertising in publications, which fail to measure up. In 1993 the Ming Pao newspaper revealed that the Bank of China, one of the largest of Beijing's commercial organizations in the territory, had issued instructions that no advertisements were to be placed in nineteen newspapers and magazines which were listed in a leaked document. Word quickly spreads as to who has become out of favor, and other businesses with strong China links are reluctant to advertise in publications regarded as being non-approved, Vines said.
Xinhua used to classify the media into four categories: 1. China-controlled media, 2. Friendly media. 3. Neutral media and 4. Hostile media. The media organizations falling into categories 2 and 3 could expect to receive a stream of communications from the NCNA, some containing praise for reports favorable to China's point of view, others - never slow in coming - criticizing reports and named journalists seen as not toeing the line.
