And in Part 2, Big Tech flees Hong Kong
BY:
Caterina Conti
Media Operations
PROJECT COUNSEL MEDIA
7 July 2020 (Paris, France) – As tensions between the U.S. and China escalate, more U.S. media companies like The Information, Politico and The Wire China are looking to invest in coverage of the country and its technology and business boom.
Why it matters: “It’s coverage you have to have if you’re a serious tech or business news operation,” says Bill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter.
- The Information, a business and tech news media company founded by Wall Street Journal veteran Jessica Lessin, is launching a free new weekly Chinese-language newsletter covering Silicon Valley and China’s tech sector for a Chinese-speaking audience. It will be its first non-English language editorial product, with Hong Kong-based Yunan Zhang as the lead writer.
- At Politico, the company’s new “China Watcher” newsletter written by David Wertime. has quickly become one of its top-performing products since launching in May.
- The Wire China, a digital news magazine dedicated to understanding China’s economic rise, was co-founded in April by longtime former N.Y. Times correspondent David Barboza.
Between the lines: Rising tensions between the U.S. and China and recent crackdowns in Hong Kong by mainland authorities will make it harder for international media operations to continue covering the country from within.
- This will “make the job of doing journalism in the region harder in China and in Hong Kong,” says Gady Epstein, The Economist‘s China affairs editor and a former media editor.
Be smart: For many major news outlets, Hong Kong has for years been the hub for Western news coverage of China, but the new Chinese security law may make it harder for bureaus and journalists to remain there.
- In a longer piece to appear later in The Economist, Epstein speculates that some news organizations could move their Asia bureaus to places like Tokyo, Singapore or Taiwan, but so far, none of the major news organizations with bureaus in Hong Kong have announced plans to move.
The bottom line: The rise of Chinese tech giants like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) has also forced Western news outlets to invest in coverage of Chinese innovation and investment.
- “U.S. China relations are at a decade-long low point, and yet there has never been a Chinese company that has captured the American imagination like TikTok,” says Shai Oster, the Asia bureau chief for The Information.
- “So on one hand, you have this wave of isolationism, but on the other hand, Western VC-backed Chinese companies are bigger than they have ever been.”
Big Tech flees Hong Kong
TikTok announced yesterday that it would pull its social video platform out of the Google and Apple app stores in Hong Kong amid a restrictive new law that went into effect last week.
Why it matters: Observers have said the new law forces companies doing business in Hong Kong to provide user data to the Chinese government as well as to comply with censorship requests.
- Details: TikTok’s move comes as many of the big tech companies said they have temporarily paused all responses to data requests from Hong Kong authorities as they seek to understand the law’s implications.
- Yes, but: These pauses aren’t seen as anything but a very short-term solution. In the long term, companies will likely face the choice of doing business in Hong Kong the way China wants, or picking up stakes and moving employees elsewhere in Asia.
