l was told by the desk editors at the Times: "We don't want to embarrass Peter while he's in China." So no stories about China or Hong Kong were run. And from then on, it was like that.
Murdoch has enormous interests in China, and he had obviously just decided that's it. And we know he makes these decisions because when he was interviewed about why he got rid of the BBC in Hong Kong and why he sold the South China Morning Post, he said: "I didn't see why I should be in charge of things that made the leaders of China angry when they are people with whom I wish to do business."
He put it exactly lick that. He doesn't kid around, Murdoch. And that was it. It was: "Enough already! Enough Mirsky."
He also decided that he had made a big mistake in backing Patten for five years. He said to a Times leader-writer: "We really made a mistake. I now see that was a mistake .
About 10 days ago, I offered him a leader on why I thought Patten would make a good mayor for London. Absolutely not! The same piece went straight into the Wall Street Journal.
From the audience: Did you contact an English newspaper about doing that piece?
Mirsky: I offered it to the Times. They said no. There is an understanding in all daily papers that you don't offer stuff to a rival. So if you read the WallStreet Journal or the International Herald Tribune and see me there, those pieces have all been offered to the Times first. You may read something in the IHT tomorrow about why Chinese swimmers cheat, which, after all, is worth considering.
Why do they keep on doing it, when they're going get caught? At least the Times doesn't say to em: "And you can't write it anywhere else.."
Hong Kong continues to be ruled by elites who will keep the territory's economy ticking and its popular - and often anti-China politics - under control. But a simple reassignment of colonial power was not, on the surface, the intent of the agreements that governed the territory's transformation into a Special Administrative Region of China.
"Hong Kong's relationship to China was not supposed to be the same as its relationship with Britain," says Yash Ghai, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong and occasional legal adviser to the government. China promised Hong Kong a "high degree of autonomy" after 1997; Beijing would handle only foreign affairs and defense under the "one country, two systems" formula. "But the SAR government has ignored that fact and taken a very mechanical view that sovereignty has changed but that nothing else has changed," says Ghai.
