Jointly Authored by Stuart Ashcombe and Ryan Cheung
Over four thousand arrests, twenty weeks of calamity, and no signs of weakening from all parties – Hong Kong is in the midst of its biggest political crisis since the handover in 1997. The ‘Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill’ Movement (Anti-ELAB) has caused turmoil and upheaval in all parts of the city, often on a daily basis. Amidst this chaos, journalists have scrambled to piece together a coherent account of the motivations and events driving this movement.
‘It was all a setup, designed to manipulate public opinion in the West, and in Hong Kong itself’
Andre Vltchek, writing on protestor injuries in China Daily[i]
It is perhaps to the surprise of no-one that this narrative – one of Western involvement in an otherwise domestic affair – has dominated mainland Chinese media. In Hong Kong and the UK, however, the coverage has been considerably less consistent.
This article, whilst providing nothing near to a complete study of media coverage of the riots, will provide a synopsis of the various gazes being cast over what is one of the most important political events of the 21st Century. The first section will reflect on the differing reactions of the increasingly partisan HK media to some of the events that defined 2019. Whilst in the UK there was near-unanimous support for the protestors across major news outlets, in the second section we shall explore the differences in the ‘fine print’ – the small, though important, distinctions in how the riots were portrayed in Britain.
Amidst the Chaos: Divergent Views within Hong Kong’s Media Outlets
A particularly notable feature of the movement in HK has been the rapid rate at which information is disseminated. From a banned app which tracks police movement[ii], to a forum on which combat tactics for violent protests are often discussed[iii], traditional media outlets have found themselves in an awkward position as a source of publicly accessible information in Hong Kong.
As the Movement escalated from predominantly peaceful marches to violent clashes with the police, the political stance of the general demographic had splintered into various different sub-sections under the traditional umbrella terms of ‘pro-establishment’ and ‘pan-democrats’. For instance, many who sympathise with all forms of protests branded themselves as ‘peaceful, reasonable and nonviolent’ (和理非)supporters of the movement. This faction, often branded as ‘yellow-ribbons’, claims that whatever the magnitude of the violence that is inflicted by the protestors, there will be no cutting ties (不割席).
On the other end of the spectrum, there are hard-line pro-establishment Hongkongers who agree with Xi and Lam’s idea of strict enforcement of the law, with a view to bringing stability back to civil society as soon as possible. This camp is often branded as ‘blue-ribbons’.
Political stances of the traditional media outlets, as a matter of public impression, seem to reflect these splintered views. One poignant evidence is the following chart found widely distributed online that pigeonholes the outlets with their degree of blue or yellow:
The above chart concisely captures the range of political leanings of major outlets in Hong Kong, from the staunchly pro-Beijing Ta Kuang Pao (top left) to the overtly pro-Democracy website and newspaper Passion Times (bottom right).
In light of this diversity, it is helpful to examine, on a case-by-case basis, how a plethora of local Hong Kong media outlets chose to depict key events of the Movement. The main English-language outlets under scrutiny are the South China Morning Post (SCMP) and the Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP). Similarly, various Chinese-language outlets will also be examined.
The first noteworthy event was the June 12 protest: the first significant protest that was officially classified as a riot, and which blocked the Legislative Council from proceeding with the second reading of the Extradition Bill. The SCMP, perhaps in a foreshadowing manner, headlined the event with ‘Police chief paints disturbing picture of Hong Kong extradition bill protests’. By contrast, one of HKFP’s headline read ‘“Hong Kong will bleed”: Hong Kong police use[d] tear gas as protesters try to storm legislature’.
What is immediately apparent is the deployment of language aimed at various levels of shock, correlating to (perhaps even fuelling) the splintered reactions from the demographic – with some feeling that the use of tear gas on the occasion was plainly excessive, and others feeling less so. The Chinese newspaper Ming Pao shed a different light by emphasizing that ‘the Chief Secretary said that the HK executives had no participation in the shootings’. This rather intentional highlight planted the early seeds of focusing the issue of police brutality on the police force itself, rather than to the wider government.
As events progressed throughout the Movement, the stance taken by the press had not only cemented but began to polarize. Moderate language began to seem unfashionable, as the readership yearned for descriptions of events which fitted their narrative.
When Carrie Lam, the city’s Chief Executive, announced that the extradition bill is ‘dead’ (which fell short of a full withdrawal) the press reacted with divergence. SCMP described that in doing so Lam was ‘unable to win over her critics’; with HKFP going so far to say that the ‘departure’ of Lam is a ‘mere matter of time’. Again the phenomenon is similarly reflected in the Chinese press, with Ming Pao reporting the announcement to have only ‘caus[ed] controversy’ and HK01 quoting the ex-chairman of the Legislative Council to suggest that the phrase ‘the Bill is dead’ is the ‘most thorough rhetoric, with ‘no need to hold on to a full-fledged withdrawal’.
Then came one of the most significant turning points in the movement: the July 21 incident in Yuen Long, where mobs dressed in white attacked protestors and civilians indiscriminately in an MTR station. To date, only 6 people have been charged for the attacks. This also catapulted the Movement into an anti-police frenzy, as officers were late to arrive to the scene, some even suggesting that they saw nobody with offensive weapons.
This incident spiralled the press into a frantic political word-search. On one extreme, the pro-Beijing Chinese paper Tai Kung Pao labelled it as a ‘night of chaos’; on the other the attackers were branded as ‘white clad rioters’ by Apple Daily. SCMP labelled them as a ‘rod-wielding mob’ which beat ‘screaming protestors’; whilst HKFP was quick to state that no arrests were immediately made, and that the attacking mob were in the ‘hundreds’ and ‘assault[ed] protesters, journalists and residents’. One local outlet, HK01, went so far to suggest that they were ‘cross-faction triads’.
The choice of language foreshadowed what was to come: an exponential polarization of opinions and radicalization of protests plagued the months ahead of July. Police brutality and lack of accountability then replaced resentment to the actual extradition bill as the centrepiece of public demands.
Though it is arguable that it was mainstream media that fuelled and propelled the splintering of political thought, it is equally compelling to say that such mainstream outlets acted in ways they did because they could only survive by cementing their position so as to reflect the position of its readership. This pattern of interaction between authorship and readership continues with respect to other events such as police shootings and the ‘siege’ of universities.
The unfortunate consequence of this phenomenon is that Hong Kong runs the risk of harbouring fewer and fewer news outlets which provide an impartial account of facts, pushing this city further into the quagmire of a seemingly post-truth era.
In any event, this is also emblematic of what Hong Kong lacks and so desperately needs in this Movement – a platform for compromise and open debate, with a view to solving the deep-rooted issues which had long been buried deep beneath the city’s white lights and razzmatazz.
Gazing from Afar: The Development of a Consensus in Mainstream UK Media
In the UK, there has been a much greater degree of solidarity amongst major news outlets, with all of them adopting a broadly pro-democracy stance. This being said, coverage has not been identical – different outlets have, particularly in the early stages of the movement, differed in their attitude towards the HK police, and have disagreed on the motivations spurring on the riots. For the sake of brevity this article will consider only two major outlets – the Guardian and the Daily Mail, which have been selected on the grounds that they occupy different ends of the political spectrum.
Looking to mid-2019, we find an early discrepancy as to the scope of the riots. Responding to the 12th June riot (which inhibited the second reading of the Extradition Bill in the Legislative Council), the Daily Mail reported that the protestors were ‘unified for a very specific goal – to prevent a policy seen as an existential threat to Hong Kong’s unique global position.’[iv] Whilst true of the events of the day, the statement also roots the cause of the protests in the short-term, relating the frustration and anger of those on the streets to a particular piece of proposed legislation.
The Guardian, by contrast, had by the 9th July already set the scope of their gaze more broadly, and published a co-written piece by Jacky Chan Man Hei (former Secretary General of the HK Federation of Students) and Jun Pang that named the latest protests as the newest manifestation of a pro-democracy movement that had reared its head before in 1997 and 2014.[v]
This division appears to have also correlated with each outlet’s attitude towards the Hong Kong Police. To be clear, neither outlet condones police violence. In fact, both make efforts to condemn it, with the Daily Mail emphasising the toll of those hospitalised in the 12th June incident, and the Guardian heavily criticising the use of tear gas against ‘peaceful protestors.’[vi]
The report by the Daily Mail, however, contains a small, though crucially important, distinction. It removes a degree of condemnation from the police force in noting that they were ‘stuck between a rock and hard place.’[vii] This is by no means a show of support for the violent actions of the police, but instead represents a difference of emphasis once again – the Daily Mail indicated a separation between ‘government’ and ‘police’ in their analysis, whereas the two appear somewhat more synonymous in earlier Guardian reports.
A key turning point in the British media’s attitude towards the unfurling events occurred on the 4th September: Carrie Lam’s formal withdrawal of the Extradition Bill. This event, whilst significant in its own right, failed to stem the protest movement and proved resoundingly that the bill was not the sole driving factor behind the movement. Whilst this did not affect the line of the Guardian (given that they already associated the protests with a broader teleology of events), it led to a subtle, though significant, change in the reports of the Mail Online. Included in almost every report on the Hong Kong situation published by the outlet in December 2019 is a paragraph that states that whilst the protests began as a response to the proposed Extradition Bill, they ‘have since snowballed into a broad anti-government campaign’[viii].
In this sense, the final months of 2019 appear to have shown a consolidation, not a divergence, of major media outlets in the UK – which has further been strengthened by the emphasis both have recently placed on police violence and brutality as a major factor in continued unrest, owing largely to the events of 1st October and 11th November, in which protestors were severely injured and tragically killed in clashes. In an editorial published by the Guardian on 18th November, the outlet blames ‘excessive force and police brutality’[ix] for the continued demonstrations, a sentiment echoed by the Mail Online.
In all, the events of 2019 were the cause of much confusion for news outlets, with widespread misinformation and the fragmented nature of the protest movement contributing to a hazy understanding of the protests, the motivations behind them, and the key actors in each event.
From this time of mass misunderstanding, however, it appears divergent trends have occurred across the media in Hong Kong and the UK. Whilst the local election results have somewhat curbed the loudest excesses of anti-protest sentiments, the dividing line between those that are ‘pro-Beijing’ and those that are ‘pro-Democracy’ in Hong Kong has grown ever bolder and more distinct. In contrast, in the UK we have witnessed something of a ‘consolidation in chaos’. As events have unfurled, not least the formal withdrawal of the Extradition Bill, major UK news outlets have come closer to portraying a coherent message – the protests represent so much more than anger at a particular bill, and unchecked police violence remains the greatest factor preventing a stable peace.
[i] China Daily January 3-9, 2020
[ii] Hkmap.live
[iii] LIHKG
[iv] Mail Online, 14th June
[v] Guardian Online, ‘The Untold Story of Hong Kong’s Protests is How One Simple Slogan Connects Us’, 9th July 2019
[vi] Guardian Online, 13th June 2019
[vii] Mail Online, 14th June 2019
[viii] Mail Online, December 2019 (Exact wording differs in each article, though with the same sentiment)
[ix] Guardian Online, 11th November 2019