Conclusions

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Even under British rule, freedom of the press was elusive in Hong Kong. The British colonial administration-imposed laws similar to those used in other colonies to ensure that the press would not oppose its rule. Shen “counted as many as 30 laws in Hong Kong that could be used to curb the freedom of the press” (1972: 31). In practice, these laws were seldom enforced, mostly because the press in the immediate post-war decades did not focus on social and political affairs in Hong Kong. Press freedom meant freedom to criticize both the Communist regime in the PRC and the KMT regime in Taiwan, but not freedom to challenge the colonial government (Chan & Lee, 1991). The Hong Kong Journalists Association became publicly more outspoken, and Hong Kong’s citizens became more active in asserting their rights only by the mid-1980s, more than a century after British rule. The major impetus for more democratic procedures came in reaction to the Chinese military crackdown on protestors in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, when over 1 million people demonstrated and demanded more democratic institutions to protect themselves from similar crackdowns after the handover. As July 1, 1997 approached, the Hong Kong as well as the international press began voicing significant concern about the future of the free press in Hong Kong.