In the small hours of February 20, Hong Kong's second-biggest news story of 1997 broke. China's ninety-two-year-old patriarch, Deng Xiaoping, was dead. Acting on a midnight tip that a Beijing-funded local newspaper was preparing a black border for its front page, the South China Morning Post held its presses until Deng's death was confirmed. Then the Post, Hong Kong's leading English-language newspaper, ran a poster-size picture of Deng on a special wraparound front page with five pages of related news in side. Most of Hong Kong's other major dailies blackened their normally colorful mastheads or added funereal borders on page one. The Post also put out an eight-page lunchtime special with an in-depth look at the architect of China's economic reforms and of Hong Kong's biggest story of 1997, the territory's imminent return to Chinese rule. In the voluminous coverage of Deng's life and times readers would need a fine net to catch mention of his leading role in the June 4, 1989, killings of protesters at Tiananmen Square.

 "I wasn't telling anyone that because Hong Kong is returning to China on July 1, we must write hagiography," asserts the Post's editor, Jonathan Fenby. No one had to say a word. Since the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 sealed the colony's return to China, the greatest enemy of press freedom in Hong Kong has been self-censorship. "It's a sign of a community that's terrified," says Legislative Councilor Emily Lau, one of twenty-seven elected lawmakers who'll be turned out on July 1 in favor of Beijing-appointed legislators.

 China begins then to call the tune in this territory of 6.3 million people, 98 percent of them ethnic Chinese. Hong Kong is not only the business and finance hub of Asia outside Japan, but also the media hub. Besides serving as a base for dozens of international companies and their regional editions or services -- Time, Newsweek, Business Week, UPI, The Asian Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many more -- Hong Kong also has a lively local press scene and a long tradition of raucous press freedom, even in the harsher years of British control.

 Today, nearly twenty dailies, including two in English, vie for readers. The top two Chinese-language papers, Oriental Daily News and Apple Daily, sell more than 350,000 copies each, boast seven-figure readerships, and feature detailed reviews of local brothels. Three Beijing-funded newspapers also compete in the marketplace, and China's official People's Daily is set to begin distribution by the hand-over. At the other end of the political spectrum, Mad Dog Daily, introduced last year, barks out horse-racing tips and anti-Beijing political commentary. Dozens of other small, community-news "mosquito" dailies add to the newsstand buzz.

 The flood of news, besides providing thousands of jobs for Hong Kong people and expatriates, helps drive this bastion of capitalism. Even Tsang Tak-sing, chief editor of the Beijing-funded daily Ta Kung Pao, concedes, "We need the free flow of information for Hong Kong to consolidate its position as a regional and international center of financial and economic activities, so as to be useful to the modernization of China."

 But Tsang's Beijing backers have made clear that, despite explicit assurances in international treaties, they plan to restrict the press, and Freedom Forum's Asia director, John Schidlovsky, sees a sad irony in China's efforts. "If Hong Kong's press freedom were to disappear," he says, "it would happen at a time when Southeast Asia's press is more feisty than it was ten years ago. It would be a defeat that would send a negative message to people who are trying to win press freedom in their countries."

 The overriding consensus among the foreign press in Hong Kong, though, is that no profound changes in their freedom to report are likely after July 1. As Sandra Burton, bureau chief for Time, told the Commonwealth Journalists Association Conference in January: "We'll be treated better than our local colleagues. It's easier to pressure local journalists."

 Already, reporters from the iconoclastic millionaire publisher Jimmy Lai's Apple Daily (see "An Apple a Day," CJR, March/April 1996) are barred from entering China, though officials sometimes turn a blind eye to their presence. Apple is the second-biggest newspaper in Hong Kong after Oriental Daily News, but the two-year-old paper, which has lambasted China's leadership over many issues, gets no advertising from China-controlled companies. Beijing also retaliated against Lai's Giordano clothing stores -- he has since sold his stock in the chain -- and bankers eager for business in China have refused to underwrite a public listing for his profitable media group, Next Media Holdings.

 Article 27 of the Basic Law, the blueprint for reunified Hong Kong's relationship with China, guarantees Hong Kong residents "freedom of speech, of the press and of publication." But Article 23 instructs the Beijing-appointed Provisional Legislature of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) government to pass its own laws prohibiting "treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People's Government, or theft of state secrets." Journalists say such laws open the door to press restrictions. So do disused colonial statutes still on the books, which give the local government broad power to curb free expression.

 Optimists argue that Deng's doctrine of "one country-two systems" guarantees Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, with only its defense and foreign relations reserved to China's central government. Legislative Councilor Bruce Liu, who also sits in the Beijing-appointed Provisional Legislature, pledges to press the SAR government to maintain its independence. "Maybe we have 80 percent independence now," Liu says. "Maybe we'll only have 60 percent after the handover."

 Paul Cheung Kin-bor, chief editor of Ming Pao, a 450,000-readership daily noted for political and intellectual commentary, says: "We have very different concepts. When we talk about freedom of the press, we must convince Chinese officials that what we're doing is in the best interests of the Hong Kong people and that they should keep their hands off." Lots of luck.

 Last June, China's Director of Hong Kong and Macao Affairs, Lu Ping, warned: "It's all right if reporters objectively report. But if they advocate, it is action. That has nothing to do with freedom of the press."

 Lu and other Chinese leaders say supporting independence for Taiwan, Tibet, China's ethnic minorities, or Hong Kong will be off limits. "The question is," Fenby says, "can people in China understand that when a Hong Kong newspaper puts a picture of Lee Tu ng-hui" -- Taiwan's president -- "on page one, they're not endorsing his policies?" (ATV, one of the territory's two broadcast television stations, whose signals reach 24 million people in southern China, says it has no plans to stop its broadcasts of Tai wan's evening news, shown nightly after the mainland evening news.)

 In October, China's foreign minister and deputy premier, Qian Qichen, chairman of the preparatory committee overseeing the handover, told The Asian Wall Street Journal that freedom of the press in Hong Kong won't extend to reporting "rumors or lies" or personal attacks on China's leaders. This February, Tung Chee-hwa, appointed by Beijing as chief executive-designate of the SAR government, told CNN that "slanderous, derogative remarks and attacks" against China's leaders might also be illegal. Tung supports Beijing's proposal to repeal a provision linking the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to Hong Kong's Bill of Rights on the ground that it contravenes the Basic Law.

 Vague statements and ambiguous rumblings feeding a climate of fear may prove far more effective in curbing the press than specific directives. Surveying local journalists last year, Joseph Man Chan, journalism department chairman at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, found 25 percent admitted practicing self-censorship on issues they believed sensitive to China, and some 50 percent said they believed colleagues did so. "Right now, self-censorship is still being debated, and it's still seen as a despicable act," Chan says. "But there's a danger it may be considered a routine part of journalism as China's influence increases."

 In recent months, there has been declining coverage of Martin Lee, leader of the Democratic party, Hong Kong's most popular party, as well as of other politicians out of favor with Beijing. Meanwhile, Freedom Forum's Schidlovsky says, coverage of Chief Executive-designate Tung has been "deferential, if not reverential," adding, "Coverage of his selection process almost was as if it was a western-style democratic campaign and election, rather than a process completely controlled by Beijing."

 In his speech acknowledging the need for a "free flow of information," Tsang Tak-sing of Ta Kung Pao wondered where defenders of free expression had been during Hong Kong's years of undemocratic colonial rule from London. Addressing the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong in February, Tsang asked, "Why in the past 150 years had there never been any pronouncement from Washington to the effect that unless there were better treatment of the people in Hong Kong, the 'special relationship' between the U.S. and the U.K. would be severed? After 150 years of foreign domination over Hong Kong, I look forward to the full realization of the slogan 'Hong Kong to be administered by the people of Hong Kong.'"

 International media companies are betting that their freedoms will be relatively unchanged after the handover. Amid the gathering signs of press restrictions under Chinese rule, Time, CNN, NBC Asia, Thailand's Manager Media Group (publishers of Asia, Inc. as well as the Bangkok-based Asia Times daily), and Bloomberg Business News have either established or significantly expanded editorial management functions in Hong Kong since 1995. Only Reuters has decamped, to Singapore. Its Asia editor, Tony Winning, says the decision was based on available space in a building Reuters owns there, enabling the company to put its regional marketing, administration, and editorial functions under one roof. Says he: "Freedom of the press had nothing to do with it."

 "Hong Kong really is the crossroads of Asia in a way no other place is," says CNN's bureau chief, Mike Chinoy. "If we thought it would go to hell in a handbasket, we wouldn't be here."

 But among local journalists, cartoonist Larry Feign thinks he has seen the future, and finds it bleak. His South China Morning Post strip, "The World of Lily Wong," was dropped in May 1995 because, he says, Robert Kuok, the businessman who owns the paper, "is a friend of Li Peng" -- China's premier -- "and has multimillion-dollar investments in China." Feign's twelve-year-old-strip was scrubbed immediately after it suggested that a citizen agreeing with the suggestion that "Li Peng is a fascist murderous dog" became an instant organ donor. To the Post's contention that his firing was just part of a 10 percent staff cutback, Feign declares: "It's bullshit that the editor wanted to cut costs by cutting out his most popular feature.

 "I've been totally blacklisted," Feign claims, even though, he says, editors tell him, "You're the best cartoonist in Hong Kong. We love your stuff." Stingingly he adds, "There is no clampdown on free speech in Hong Kong, and there won't be any after July 1. There won't have to be. We're doing it all ourselves."

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