A Hong Kong court has convicted the publisher of the Wall Street Journal of deterring a reporter from taking up a trade union role, in a case that raised concerns about press freedom in the city. The newspaper dismissed Selina Cheng just weeks after she was appointed chair of the Hong Kong Journalist Association (HKJA) in 2024. She was told at the time her termination was officially due to restructuring. Outside court on Thursday, Cheng said: “If reporters’ employment rights are not sufficiently safeguarded, or when their rights are violated…
Tag: Media
Reform’s media presenter worked for Chinese state propaganda channel
Reform UK’s top media presenter has worked for a Chinese state propaganda channel within the past year, the Guardian can reveal. Ray Addison, who presents the political party’s in-house podcast and social media campaigns, fronted films about Xinjiang province – where the Chinese government is accused of committing genocide – for state media in September 2025. In the videos, entitled Raymond’s Xinjiang Stories, some of which praise Chinese infrastructure, Addison described himself as a CGTN correspondent. The series was made after Addison left GB News in 2024, where he had…
Anthony Fauci’s diaries take aim at News Corp journalist Sharri Markson’s ‘nonsense’ Covid-19 investigation
Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s chief medical adviser at the start of the pandemic, has described a book by News Corp investigative journalist Sharri Markson backing the “lab leak” theory of Covid-19’s origins as a “bunch of nonsense” in his newly released diaries. This week, Fauci, 85, was subpoenaed by the Republican senator Rand Paul to appear at a Senate hearing into Covid-19 and his handling of the pandemic. The physician and veteran former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who retired in 2022, accused Paul…
The Guardian view on perceptions of superpowers: the world isn’t Chinamaxxing, it’s America-avoidant | Editorial
Startling new research shows that in many countries – including old US allies – the public prefers Beijing to Washington Earlier this year, a spate of western TikTok and Instagram creators announced that they were at “a very Chinese time in my life” – drinking hot water and wearing slippers around their homes. The Chinamaxxing phenomenon primarily reflected the constant need of influencers for novel content. But social media trends also reflect a growing fascination with China, as the economic historian Adam Tooze has noted. While it broods over China’s…
Dettol apologises after ‘toxic men’ advert sparks backlash in China
The British hygiene brand Dettol has apologised after an advertisement released in China, which it said was intended to criticise “toxic men”, was widely condemned on social media as offensive to women. The five-minute advert for a multipurpose disinfectant, released across many online platforms at the end of May, features a man comparing his girlfriend with his former partner. Learning that his former girlfriend previously lived with someone else, the man likens their relationship to a “secondhand service”. He then tells his friends that he intends to find a “clean…
Francis Markus obituary
My friend the former BBC Shanghai correspondent Francis Markus, who has died aged 65 of cancer, was a talented journalist whose compassion for those he reported on led him to spend the last two decades of his life working for humanitarian organisations throughout Asia. After being posted to Shanghai in 2002, Francis demonstrated not just an unerring news sense, covering protests in Hong Kong and social change in China, but a deep interest in human stories, from the suicide-watchers patrolling one of China’s highest bridges over the Yangtze River, to…
Lululemon apologises after Japanese drum row at Great Wall yoga event
The activewear brand Lululemon has apologised after a promotional event held on the Great Wall of China appeared to mistakenly feature a Japanese drum, prompting an uproar. The Canadian-headquartered company, known for its upmarket leggings, has been growing rapidly in China and arranged for a yoga festival to take place in late May on a section of the wall near Beijing. More than 2,000 people were invited to take part in the event, which was advertised as promoting Chinese culture and wellness, according to the Chinese state-run tabloid Global Times,…
Chinese activist in UK told by X that abusive deepfakes do not breach rules
A high-profile Chinese activist in the UK who was inundated with deepfake posts on X portraying her as a sexually promiscuous drug addict was told that the abuse did not breach the rules of Elon Musk’s platform. Apple Peiqing Ni, the 27-year-old founder of the UK-based China Dissent Network, had been advised by UK police to complain to the US-headquartered platform after she was targeted by what she believes is a pro-regime bot. The abuse included 12 posts tagging Ni and containing fake photographs and videos of her. The captions…
After China Orders a Times Reporter to Leave the Country, the U.S. Reciprocates
China’s government has ordered a New York Times reporter to leave the country, and the Trump administration has responded by revoking the visa of a U.S.-based Chinese state media journalist, in a diplomatic tit-for-tat with implications for press freedoms and U.S.-China relations. The expulsion order in February of the Times reporter, Vivian Wang, is the latest example of a crackdown by Beijing on foreign correspondents whose reporting challenges the official line of President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian government. It also inflames long-running tensions between China and the United States over the…
Jailed Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai wins free speech award in Germany
The jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster said on Thursday that Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on 23 June at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle’s director general, Barbara Massing, praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk”. “With Apple Daily, he gave…