Editor says China has decided to let Hong Kong

When Hong Kong was still a British territory, the editor of the South China Morning Post, Jonathan Fenby, occasionally got calls from Governor Chris Patten's office about how a story might be treated. As a former editor of the London Observer he said such pressure "didn't shock or surprise me", since in Britain "spin doctors call you all the time".

Once, he said, "I had a call from someone in Government House suggesting I should change the front page story because it might embarrass the boss," and the official had appealed to his patriotism, saying "I'm sure you would agree that at a time like this nothing should be done to destabilise the government."

When the British left a year ago, there was much speculation about what pressures the new pro-Beijing administration would put on the Hong Kong media. Mr Tung Cheehwa, the shipping tycoon who is now the territory's chief executive, warned editors that slanderous and derogatory remarks and personal attacks on Chinese leaders might be illegal.

What about now? I asked Mr Fenby in his glass-walled editorial office as the first anniversary of the handover approached. He reflected for a moment. "The only call I have had from his (Tung's) office," he said, "was to ask me if I could help his shipping company to get an advertisement run in our Sunday paper, because they had forgotten about it on Friday afternoon." There are a number of reasons why the new administration has adopted a hands-off attitude to the newspaper. The "old boy" approach is not possible unless both parties are British. Perhaps, said the urbane Mr Fenby, laughing ruefully, "the lack of a call (is) a sign that the media don't matter that much."

He believes a third explanation is more likely - that China is really serious in allowing Hong Kong to continue its capitalist ways without interference under the one country-two systems policy promised by Beijing.

"I think the leadership in Beijing made a decision at some point, maybe the beginning of last year, to actually stick by the one country-two systems theme," he said. "Genuinely, I find officials are very hands-off as regards HK. That's their policy. It includes the media, the legal system, the right to demonstrate, freedom of expression, the press - it does not include the electoral system and there are some wary of that."

The South China Morning Post does indeed matter to the new bosses in Government House. Founded in 1903 by Alfred Cunningham as a mouthpiece for the reform movement in China, it is still a platform, as are the Chinese-language newspapers in the territory, for the reform movement in mainland China.

Once read only by expatriates, and so obsessed with the doings of the crown representative that a survey in 1973 found "governor" its third-most commonly used word, the Post is Asia's leading English language newspaper, with an award-winning website and a circulation of 120,000 - slightly up from a year ago - of which 53 per cent are Chinese and 24 per cent other Asians.

Owned for a time by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, since 1993 it has been controlled by Mr Robert Kuok, owner of the luxury Shangri-la hotel chain and a friend of Beijing. This has prompted critics to seek for signs of self-censorship or appeasement. But the South China Morning Post in the first year of Chinese rule has reported extensively on the activities of exiled Chinese dissidents Mr Wei Jingsheng and Mr Wang Dan and on human rights in China.

Outspoken critics of China like Emily Lau and Nury Vittachi continue to write regular columns. Its hard-hitting Beijing staff frequently set the agenda for other China-based correspondents.

"The extreme doom and gloom predicted widely a year ago - tanks on the street, democrats in jail, censors sitting there (he waved his arm towards the next office) - it hasn't happened and you wouldn't see anything different from a year ago in the way we treat news, comment and analysis," said Mr Fenby, who that evening splashed an account of the huge June 4th Tiananmen vigil in Hong Kong on the front page.

This story mattered so much to the Chinese that the Post was banned from its usual outlets in Beijing the next day.

Mr Fenby is used to being under fire. He had what he described as a "thunderous lunch" with officials of the outgoing administration who as much as accused him of abandoning democracy. He has been called a "pro-Peking mouthpiece" in a satirical Internet website, Not the South China Morning Post, run by a Briton, Dr George Adams. Mr Fenby has lashed back on line, taking Mr Adams to task for mistakes which he did not have "the decency to admit". One of his chief critics has been the ex-London Times correspondent, Dr Jonathan Mirsky, who "irked" him a bit he said, especially over comments he made on a Hong Kong radio programme last year that the appointment of a former China Daily editor, Mr Feng Xi-liang, as an editorial consultant to the Post was a sign of Beijing interference. Dr Mirsky dismissed Mr Fenby's assurances that Mr Feng was a consultant and nothing more.

"Mirsky said, `Well Fenby would say that wouldn't he? . . . if he told the truth he would lose his job'," the Post editor recalled with irritation.

"All I can say is, don't put consultant in quotation marks because that is what he is and I'm the editor, but I'm never going to lay that one - what got under my skin was that the stories which implicitly or explicitly portrayed me as a man who would be happy to work with a censor sitting on the other side of the desk were written by people here whom I knew, and had drinks with and dinner and so on, and some of whom I worked with. They would at least know that I am not that kind of guy."

Mr Fenby also recalled that at a forum in Britain in January Dr Mirsky had taken the line that he was an editor who had fallen from grace in the first 18 months after the paper changed hands, but that the "drip, drip of criticism" had shamed him into behaving decently.

"The problem with this is that 18 months after Murdoch sold the paper I was editing the Observer," Mr Fenby said dryly. "I was nowhere near here. I wrote him a letter and he promised me a reply but said he was too busy resigning from the Times and I haven't heard from him."

Contacted at his home in London, Dr Mirsky said: "As for Mr Fenby's first months, his colleagues thought he was frightened of China. Since then the paper has recovered its earlier independent stance and I give Mr Fenby full credit for that." He recalled that the people he knew at the South China Morning Post were terrified by the appointment of Mr Feng, who "had overseen a purge of employees" in a former job as editor in Beijing, and if Mr Feng has turned out to be no more than a consultant that was "interesting but still curious".

After a year consolidating the independence of the newspaper - for which some of his colleagues say Mr Fenby has not got enough credit - there remained one dark cloud on the horizon for the South China Morning Post editor. That was Article 23 of the Basic Law, the constitution of Hong Kong under Chinese rule. Article 23 outlaws treason, secession, sedition and subversion. Since the handover journalists in Hong Kong had been waiting with some trepidation for it to be turned into legislation and possibly used against them.

Mr Fenby lobbied hard against the article being put into law, pointing out that it would lack moral authority if opposed by the democratically-elected members of the legislative council, as was likely. Yesterday the Secretary for Justice, Ms Elsie Leung Oi-sie, announced that it was not necessary to create such a new law, at least during the two-year term of the new legislature, as no subversive acts were being committed.

"This is one of the first times the government has done the right thing for the right reasons, explained it properly and got the timing perfect," a delighted Mr Fenby said in Hong Kong yesterday. "This is a good news first-birthday present for Hong Kong."