China has dispatched regional state-run media organizations to Hong Kong in an effort to better control the narrative, a shift from the widespread censorship employed during the Occupy Protests in 2014.
Local governments late last month ordered some domestic media groups to send reporters to cover the protests with first-hand accounts, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing confidential information.
The publications included several from Guangdong Province, which borders Hong Kong, as well as Jiefang Daily from Shanghai, Zhejiang News from Zhejiang Province and the Cover from Sichuan Province.
The reporting from these local publications on Hong Kong so far has focused largely on interviews with pro-China officials and business leaders, as well as the commitment of local police to restoring law and order and the frustrations of residents whose lives have been disrupted by the protests.
The protests began in early June to oppose a bill allowing extraditions to China and have since morphed into a broader pro-democracy movement.
China has long relied mainly on major state-run media outlets such as Xinhua news agency, the People’s Daily and the Global Times to report on sensitive issues, with heavier censorship on regional publications.
The Chinese State Council Information Office did not immediately reply to a fax seeking comment.
The change in strategy is partly because China wants to reinforce publicity targeting citizens in coastal provinces who have family or connections in Hong Kong, said Willy Lam (林和立), adjunct professor at the Center for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“The shift shows Beijing considers the challenge far more serious than 2014,” he said. “Beijing is trying to convince the domestic audience about what is happening there from its point of view.”
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS