Wall Street Journal fires Hong Kong journalist after his stint as press union chairman

Reporter Selina Cheng told a news conference on Wednesday that she believed the termination was related to her role as chair of the organization, saying her employer had pressured her to leave the association.

The day before the HKJA election, Cheng said her superiors instructed her to withdraw her candidacy and leave the HKJA board, of which she has been a member since 2021. She refused their request.

“I was immediately told that this was incompatible with my job,” Cheng said. “The editor said the Journal’s staff should not be seen as advocates of press freedom in a place like Hong Kong, even though they can do so in Western countries where it is already established.”

The HKJA is considered a trade union, and under Hong Kong law it is legal to be an official of a trade union – a right guaranteed by the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution.

A spokesman for Dow Jones, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, confirmed in an emailed response that there had been “personnel changes” on Wednesday, but said they could not comment on individuals.

“The Wall Street Journal has been and remains a passionate and vocal advocate for press freedom in Hong Kong and around the world,” the spokesman added.

The dismissal – if related to Cheng’s position at the HKJA – would be the latest indication that even large, well-funded international media companies fear the risks of operating in Hong Kong, a once-permissive city that is increasingly resembling mainland China in its repression of civil liberties, including press freedom.

Following mass protests in 2019, Beijing passed a national security law in Hong Kong that provided for penalties of up to life imprisonment for vaguely described crimes such as subversion of state power and collaboration with foreign powers.

These laws, along with a series of new domestic-focused security laws passed this year, have led to changes in every institution in Hong Kong, from courts to universities to newsrooms. Following the passage of the security law, The New York Times moved its digital operations in Hong Kong to Seoul, saying there is “great uncertainty” about what the changes would mean for its work and journalism.

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal announced it was moving its Asia headquarters from Hong Kong to Singapore and laid off a number of Hong Kong-based reporters. Cheng’s role was unaffected and she remained based and employed in the city. Cheng, 32, covers the Chinese auto industry, which the Journal says is one of its main areas of coverage. She cited restructuring as the reason for her dismissal on Wednesday.

In a statement, the HKJA said the Journal was “not alone” in its stance and that other elected board members had been “pressured by their employers to resign.” Previously, the Journal’s management in Hong Kong had told one of its former reporters, technology reporter Dan Strumpf, not to run for chairman of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong because it posed risks to the company.

The HKJA remains a vocal group advocating for journalists in Hong Kong, both local and foreign. In an article earlier this month, the Global Times, a Chinese state mouthpiece, wrote that the organization has a “patchy history of collaborating with separatist politicians and inciting unrest in Hong Kong” and is “by no means a professional organization representing the media in Hong Kong.”

The Global Times highlighted Cheng’s reporting for the Journal, in which she claimed she attacked the national security law, and the reporting of two other board members: James Griffiths, a correspondent for the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail, and Theodora Yu, a freelance writer and former Washington Post staffer.

Hong Kong’s security chief Chris Tang Ping-keung also attacked the HKJA, saying it had sided with the “violent mob dressed in black” during the 2019 protests.

In its statement, the HKJA called on all media operating in China to “enable their staff to campaign unhindered for press freedom and better working conditions, in solidarity with their fellow journalists in Hong Kong and China.”