These difficulties were compounded in March 1998 with charges being laid against three Sing Tao executives for allegedly falsifying circulation data for the Hong Kong Standard, the group's English-language daily. Ms. Aw was named as a co-conspirator in the alleged fraud, although she was not charged and has not had to face trial (the decision not to prosecute her was the cause of considerable controversy, as we have reported in Section 1).
But the takeover was not to be. Sing Tao announced unexpectedly in May 1998 that the acquisition had fallen through. The group claimed that talks with other potential buyers were still continuing, but with little real promise of an injection of new funds, Sing Tao's share price tumbled. A question mark remains, however, over the future of the group: will Ms Aw seek to find another "red capitalist" who, for reasons other than profit, would be willing to invest in a newspaper at this gloomy time?
While Sing Tao continues to hang on, the diversified conglomerate South China Strategic Holdings decided it was unable to support the losses on two publications it owned. It announced the closure in January 1998 of Surprise Weekly, an entertainment magazine, and followed this shortly afterwards, in March, by shutting down the Express Daily; a Chinese-language newspaper. Both publications had recorded heavy losses in 1996 and 1997, explaining perhaps why no buyers could be found. About 380 media workers were dismissed as a result of the closures. The Express Daily had experienced closure once before, in late 1995, after a newspaper price war broke out, though it resumed publication in October 1996. This time around, best by the economic downturn and by the two dominant mass-market dailies eating into circulation and revenues, the decision seems final.
March 1998 also brought news of another important closure. The monthly magazine, The Nineties, perhaps Hong Kong's best-known analytical forum on China affairs, announced it was folding after 28 years of operations. The magazine had started life (as the Seventies) with a good measure of sympathy for China and the Chinese Communist Party, but over the years had grown apart, evolving into a thorny and consistent critic. Following the 1989 massacre, when Beijing reclassified the Hong Kong media according to whether they were friendly or hostile (or some way in between), The Nineties was reliably thought to have fallen into the category of enemy - to be "isolated and attacked" .
