Updates

April 23, 2016 (South China Morning Post) — Mainland authorities have told the city’s breakaway advocates they’re outside the law. Are they? For a party which claims to have 30 to 50 members – and has paraded only two – the Hong Kong National Party has grabbed the kind of attention other parties can only dream about. One part of the reason for this is its audacious claim to advocate independence at whatever cost and its...

April 6, 2016 (South China Morning Post) — Media tycoon Ricky Wong Wai-kay’s long-running battle to ­secure a share of the free-to-air television market suffered ­another setback as the Court of Appeal quashed a lower court’s decision to have his ­licence application reconsidered. The Court of Appeal overturned a Court of First Instance ruling that the Executive Council had failed to follow the pro-competition 1998 reform ­–...

March 9, 2016  — Hong Kong’s High Court has rejected a police request for media to hand over unedited video footage showing activist Ken Tsang allegedly being assaulted by police during the pro-democracy Occupy protests in 2014. In rejecting the police commissioner’s application for a court order on TVB, Apple Daily, ATV, i-CABLE Communications, and PCCW Media to produce the footage, Justice Judianna Barnes Wai-ling...

March 2, 2016 (The Standard) — The United States, Canada, Germany, Japan and the European Union have written to China to express concern over three new or planned laws, including one on counterterrorism, in a rare joint attempt to pressure Beijing into taking their objections seriously. The US, Canadian, German and Japanese ambassadors signed a letter addressed to State Councillor and Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun,...

March 4, 2016 (RTHK) — The government said it plans to move the controversial Copyright (Amendment) Bill to the end of the batch of bills put forward to the legislature for scrutiny. The administration had earlier set March 4 as the deadline for the bill to be passed. The Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Greg So, said the reshuffling probably means legislators will not be able to deal with the bill before the...

Feb 18, 2016 (Quartz): In the latest sign that China’s long-touted “opening up” is reversing into a “closing down,” a Chinese ministry has issued new rules that ban any foreign-invested company from publishing anything online in China, effective next month. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s new rules (link in Chinese and link in English) could, if they were enforced as written, essentially shut down China as a...