"If the Hong Kong Macao Affairs Office wears the proverbial red-colored mask of Beijing Opera, Xinhua (the Hong Kong branch of the New China News Agency, or NCNA) dons the black mask--and brandishes a big stick. Xinhua Apparatchiki have always been the embodiment of the hard-line, interventionist impulses of the Zhongyang. It is no secret that well before the transition, senior HKMAO cadres led by Lu Ping waged a ferocious battle with the NCNA, which was headed by superhawk Zhou Nan from 1990 to July 1997. Part, of the conflict was a classic bureaucratic turf war because the two had overlapping functions. Yet a major reason was the fact that particularly under Zhou, Xinhua espoused a line that was much more inflexible and intolerant than that of the HKMAO."
Just prior to the handover, a big debate raged in Beijing's Hong Kong policy establishment on the role of Xinhua. Both Lu and Tung were of the opinion that it should be shrunken to the skeleton; otherwise, they argued in internal discussions, both Hong Kong residents and foreign diplomats would suspect Xinhua--and the HKMWC for which it fronts--of being the SAR government's taisbang huang (power behind the throne). This view was expressed publicly by Tung's special adviser, Paul Yip Kwok-Wah. Jiang and Qian Qichen ruled in favor of Lu and Tung even though they also decided that the NCNA should be scaled down gradually.
The new policy was conveyed by Jiang personally to Jiang Enzhu, the former Vice Foreign Minister who succeeded Zhou Nan weeks after the handover. "Don't lose heart even though one of your goals is a scaled down Xinhua," the President reportedly told Jiang. "Slashing and cutting the bureaucracy is also a major achievement." The Xinhua head was reportedly told that its 600-odd staff should be curtailed by up to 60 percent.
Actually, however, the downsizing of Xinhua has turned out to be a convoluted process. And it has continued to play a substantial role, for two major reasons. One is to fulfil the zhuada mission of "regime building and consolidation." The other is to protect its own turf. In October 1997, PRC-related companies in Hong Kong; to promote ties between the SAR and various sectors in the mainland; to handle SAR-Taiwan relations; and to 'broadly' promote links with various sectors in Hong Kong.
