Hong Kong Journalist Fired by Wall Street Journal After Leading Press Union

Journalist Selina Cheng said at a news conference on Wednesday that she believed the dismissal was related to her role as president of the association. She said she was pressured by her employer to leave the association.

The day before the HKJA elections, Cheng said, her supervisors ordered her to withdraw her candidacy and leave the HKJA board, where she has been a member since 2021. She declined their demands.

“I was immediately told that this would be incompatible with my job,” Cheng said. “The editor-in-chief said that Journal employees should not be seen as defenders of press freedom in a place like Hong Kong, even though that is the case 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 a union leader, a right guaranteed by the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution.

In an emailed response, a spokesperson for Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal’s parent company, confirmed that it had made “personnel changes” on Wednesday but said it could not comment on specific individuals.

“The Wall Street Journal has been and continues to be a staunch and ardent defender of press freedom in Hong Kong and around the world,” the spokesperson added.

The dismissal, if linked to Cheng’s position at the HKJA, would be the latest indication of the wariness that even large, well-resourced international media organizations have about the risks of operating in Hong Kong, a once-free city that has increasingly resembled mainland China in its suppression of civil liberties, including press freedom.

Following mass protests in 2019, Beijing passed a national security law in Hong Kong that carries sentences of up to life in prison for vaguely described crimes, such as subversion of state power and collusion with foreign forces.

Those laws, along with a new round of national security laws passed this year, have reshaped every institution in Hong Kong, from courts to universities to newsrooms. After the national security law was passed, The New York Times moved its digital operations from Hong Kong to Seoul, saying there was “a lot of uncertainty” about how the changes would affect its operations 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 journalists. Cheng’s role was not affected at the time, and she continued to be based and employed in the city. Cheng, 32, covers the Chinese auto industry, which The Wall Street Journal said is one of its priority coverage areas. In laying her off Wednesday, editors cited restructuring, it said.

In a statement, the HKJA said the Journal was “not alone” in taking this position and that other elected board members had been “pressured by their employers to resign.” Previously, the Journal’s Hong Kong management advised one of its former journalists, technology reporter Dan Strumpf, not to run for president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong, citing risks to the business.

The HKJA remains an advocacy group for Hong Kong journalists, both local and foreign. In an article earlier this month, China’s official Global Times said it had “a history of colluding with separatist politicians and inciting riots in Hong Kong” and was “in no way a professional organization representing Hong Kong media.”

The Global Times highlighted Cheng’s reporting for the Journal, which it said attacked the national security law, as well as reporting by two other board members: James Griffiths, a Globe and Mail correspondent based in Canada, and Theodora Yu, a freelance writer who was a former Washington Post employee.

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

In its statement, the HKJA called on all media outlets working in China “to allow their employees to freely advocate for press freedom and better working conditions in solidarity with their fellow journalists in Hong Kong and China.”