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Veteran Hong Kong Journalist, Once Jailed, Calls it Quits
Arrested on false charges of spying, Ching Cheong served three years in a Chinese prison
Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong journalist who became an international cause célèbre when he lured over the border from Hong Kong and arrested on dubious charges of spying in China in 2005 and sentenced to five years in prison, has retired to write a book giving his observations on 35 years in journalism.
Ching was freed in January 2008 and returned to his job as China bureau chief for the Straits Times of Singapore. The arrest was the first of a Hong Kong journalist after the handover of the former British colony in 1997. Given the unwillingness or inability of the Hong Kong government to intervene, the case was deeply unsettling to the territory's press establishment.
It was also an embarrassment for Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang, who had been careful not to offend Beijing, and for the Hong Kong government because it tested the edged of the vaunted one country, two systems slogan that is supposed to guarantee civil liberties in the former colony. To this day, Chinese reporters in Hong Kong — whether mainlanders or Hong Kongers — are unsure whether they might be turned over to Chinese authorities for journalistic transgressions.
Tsang was criticized during his election campaign for refusing to see Ching's wife when she requested a meeting to ask for his help. During Ching's incarceration, however, the Hong Kong Security Bureau contacted his wife once or twice a week with updates on her husband's case.
Ching, a highly respected journalist, was arrested on April 22, 2005, and charged with passing state secrets to Taiwan over a five-year period in a case that observers said was manufactured by the Chinese government to get at him for seeking a manuscript of an interview with Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader deposed in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. The arrest was said to underscore the Beijing leadership's determination to keep anything said by Zhao out of print. Zhao spent 15 years under house arrest before he died in 2005.
Ching had previously been deputy editor in chief of Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong newspaper long regarded as a mouthpiece for the Communist Party. He resigned along with several other journalists in protest after the events in Tiananmen. He was allegedly lured over the border to the southern city of Guangzhou, where he was scheduled to meet a source who had promised to give him a copy of a series of politically sensitive interviews with Zhao. The promise was a ruse.
After months in prison Ching was ultimately given a five-year prison sentence and Chinese-language newspapers attempted to discredit him by falsely reporting he had taken the Taiwanese funds to finance a mistress. He was freed after more than 1,000 days in prison. He declines to divulge the details of his arrest today, saying he remains on parole and doesn't want to violate the terms, even though he lives in Hong Kong and presumably would be outside the clutches of Beijing.
Ching was kept in a cell with 12 other inmates, most of them criminals serving long sentences. He was forced to work eight hours or more a day making police uniforms. Authorities refused to give him medicine for his high blood pressure problems, his wife said.
The charges against him, according to a colleague, "were totally trumped up. Ching made the mistake of giving them his computer at the very early stage to 'prove his innocence.' The charges were derived from ream upon ream of articles in his computer. I don't know why Ching was so gullible."
Whatever international journalists have endured from Beijing, the ordeal of local journalists is far worse. For the last 11 years in a row, China has been the leading country in the world to jail reporters, with 24 behind bars in 2009, according to a report released on Dec. 8 by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
According to the CPJ, the numbers in China reveal how dramatically the Internet has transformed both newsgathering and the dissemination of critical commentary in repressive societies. A decade ago, when China first topped the list, most of those jailed were print reporters for mainstream media outlets who had gone too far in their criticism of government officials. Today, Internet reporters and bloggers top the list. And while the Chinese media are much more open today, there are still clear limits, and journalists who displease the authorities face consequences. The difference is that they are more likely to be fired than thrown in jail.
Despite his ordeal, Ching remains positive about China. He has not returned to the mainland since his release although he continued to report on the country for the Straits Times, which he says stood behind him through the entire ordeal, taking care of his family as well. For a newspaper that has endured widespread criticism for its reluctance to criticize the Singapore government, Ching says, there has never been a time during his 12 years of service as the paper's China bureau chief when the Singapore editors ever interfered with his copy.
Ching devoted his last dispatch in the Straits Times mostly to a visit to Yugoslavia more than 30 years ago to report for Deng Xiaoping's eyes whether the first country in the communist bloc to abandon Stalinism and establish economic links with the west could serve as a model for the new China after Mao died.
To an interviewer's observation that his last column was relatively kind to China, Ching replied: "Well, see, my country and the ruling party, it is the ruling party, not my country. I love my country."
Veteran Hong Kong Journalist, Once Jailed, Calls it Quits
Arrested on false charges of spying, Ching Cheong served three years in a Chinese prison
Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong journalist who became an international cause célèbre when he lured over the border from Hong Kong and arrested on dubious charges of spying in China in 2005 and sentenced to five years in prison, has retired to write a book giving his observations on 35 years in journalism.
Ching was freed in January 2008 and returned to his job as China bureau chief for the Straits Times of Singapore. The arrest was the first of a Hong Kong journalist after the handover of the former British colony in 1997. Given the unwillingness or inability of the Hong Kong government to intervene, the case was deeply unsettling to the territory's press establishment.
It was also an embarrassment for Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang, who had been careful not to offend Beijing, and for the Hong Kong government because it tested the edged of the vaunted one country, two systems slogan that is supposed to guarantee civil liberties in the former colony. To this day, Chinese reporters in Hong Kong — whether mainlanders or Hong Kongers — are unsure whether they might be turned over to Chinese authorities for journalistic transgressions.
Tsang was criticized during his election campaign for refusing to see Ching's wife when she requested a meeting to ask for his help. During Ching's incarceration, however, the Hong Kong Security Bureau contacted his wife once or twice a week with updates on her husband's case.
Ching, a highly respected journalist, was arrested on April 22, 2005, and charged with passing state secrets to Taiwan over a five-year period in a case that observers said was manufactured by the Chinese government to get at him for seeking a manuscript of an interview with Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader deposed in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. The arrest was said to underscore the Beijing leadership's determination to keep anything said by Zhao out of print. Zhao spent 15 years under house arrest before he died in 2005.
Ching had previously been deputy editor in chief of Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong newspaper long regarded as a mouthpiece for the Communist Party. He resigned along with several other journalists in protest after the events in Tiananmen. He was allegedly lured over the border to the southern city of Guangzhou, where he was scheduled to meet a source who had promised to give him a copy of a series of politically sensitive interviews with Zhao. The promise was a ruse.
After months in prison Ching was ultimately given a five-year prison sentence and Chinese-language newspapers attempted to discredit him by falsely reporting he had taken the Taiwanese funds to finance a mistress. He was freed after more than 1,000 days in prison. He declines to divulge the details of his arrest today, saying he remains on parole and doesn't want to violate the terms, even though he lives in Hong Kong and presumably would be outside the clutches of Beijing.
Ching was kept in a cell with 12 other inmates, most of them criminals serving long sentences. He was forced to work eight hours or more a day making police uniforms. Authorities refused to give him medicine for his high blood pressure problems, his wife said.
The charges against him, according to a colleague, "were totally trumped up. Ching made the mistake of giving them his computer at the very early stage to 'prove his innocence.' The charges were derived from ream upon ream of articles in his computer. I don't know why Ching was so gullible."
Whatever international journalists have endured from Beijing, the ordeal of local journalists is far worse. For the last 11 years in a row, China has been the leading country in the world to jail reporters, with 24 behind bars in 2009, according to a report released on Dec. 8 by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
According to the CPJ, the numbers in China reveal how dramatically the Internet has transformed both newsgathering and the dissemination of critical commentary in repressive societies. A decade ago, when China first topped the list, most of those jailed were print reporters for mainstream media outlets who had gone too far in their criticism of government officials. Today, Internet reporters and bloggers top the list. And while the Chinese media are much more open today, there are still clear limits, and journalists who displease the authorities face consequences. The difference is that they are more likely to be fired than thrown in jail.
Despite his ordeal, Ching remains positive about China. He has not returned to the mainland since his release although he continued to report on the country for the Straits Times, which he says stood behind him through the entire ordeal, taking care of his family as well. For a newspaper that has endured widespread criticism for its reluctance to criticize the Singapore government, Ching says, there has never been a time during his 12 years of service as the paper's China bureau chief when the Singapore editors ever interfered with his copy.
Ching devoted his last dispatch in the Straits Times mostly to a visit to Yugoslavia more than 30 years ago to report for Deng Xiaoping's eyes whether the first country in the communist bloc to abandon Stalinism and establish economic links with the west could serve as a model for the new China after Mao died.
To an interviewer's observation that his last column was relatively kind to China, Ching replied: "Well, see, my country and the ruling party, it is the ruling party, not my country. I love my country."
