When Hong Kong, a British colony since 1842, returned to China on July 1, 1997 to become its "Special Administrative Region", there were agreement with Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, that Hong Kong would be allowed to maintain its social, economic, legal and political systems and the Hong Kong people would enjoy a high degree of autonomy including freedom of the speech of assembly and of the press for 50 years after returning to China.
Before the 1997 handover, Hong Kong's press ranked among the most free in Asia. Hong Kong's 6.3 million people supported more than 600 newspapers and magazines in Chinese and English.
Hong Kong's two commercial television, chancels both have separate English and Chinese channels, reached 90 percent of the population. (2)
Hong Kong's free media environment has attracted prominent publishers and entrepreneurs of the Western World such as Asian Wall Street Journal, Asiaweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Hong Kong also serves as a major radio and television production center for overseas Chinese language media. In the past decades, Hong Kong has become one of the world's financial centers and has developed into a major media center in Asia. Whether Hong Kong can maintain its economic prosperity and a high degree of press freedom after returning to China are focal points of international concern. Professor Lo and colleagues compare how Taiwan and China newspapers and Taiwan journalists view the future of Hong Kong and its press freedom after the 1997 handover.
Before the late 1980s, Hong Kong's news media were apolitical and docile, "skillfully managed by the colonial regime with harsh press laws." (3) The colonial government had the power to censor anything, which it considered might damage its foreign relations or might offend public morals. As a result, the major news media seldom criticized the colonial government and deliberately avoided sensitive local political and social issue. (4)
In the late 1980s, the problem of Hong Kong reverting to China, the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident and the declining authority of the colonial government impelled the news media to become politically sensitive and actively involved in political development. The Hong Kong news media was no longer as docile as before. They started to cover more political and civic issues. Since the late 1980s, the Hong Kong news media have experienced dramatic changes in their roles from apathetic and docile to politicized and critical. (5, 6)
