Stephen Vines | |||||||
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| Born | 1949or1950(age 73–74) [1] | ||||||
| Political party | Civic Party | ||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 韋安仕 | ||||||
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| Website | stephenvines-author | ||||||
Stephen Vines is a British journalist, writer, broadcaster and restaurateur, who was based in Hong Kong from 1987 to 2021. [2]
Vines first moved to Hong Kong in 1987 as a south-east Asia correspondent for The Observer , with the intent of staying for a few years. [1] [3] He then went on to work as a correspondent for the BBC, The Daily Telegraph , The Guardian, The Independent and Asia Times . Vines was the founding editor of Eastern Express , and the founder and publisher of Spike, a political and business weekly magazine. [4] Both the Eastern Express and Spike failed shortly after their launch. [5] [6] He was involved with the start-up of Hong Kong Free Press. [7] He once served as the president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club. [8]
Vines also hosted The Pulse, a current affairs TV programme on RTHK. The programme was terminated in July 2021 amid a shakedown at the "embattled" public broadcaster. [2] [8] [9]
Apart from journalism, he operated companies in the food and beverage sector. He was also a founding member of the Civic Party. [7] [10]
Vines has been a repeated critic of both the Chinese Central Government and the Chinese government of Hong Kong ever since the handover. Already in 1997, Vines compared the handling of the media by the government of Hong Kong's first Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa unfavorably to Hong Kong's last British governor Chris Patten, whom he called "very media-savvy and media-friendly." [11] Vines described Tung's administration as "staggeringly incompetent." [12] More recently, he has again compared the years before the handover under colonial rule favorably to the post-1997 period. [13] He has generally criticized Hong Kong's Chief Executives as supposedly being too loyal to the Chinese central government, for example describing the administration of Carrie Lam as "quislings." [14] [15] [16] He has lamented that "[a]fter the handover there was a frenzy of tearing down structural reminders of British colonial rule" and claims that the Chinese central government has repeatedly "undermined" Hong Kong's autonomy since 1997. [17]
In August 2021, Vines announced he left Hong Kong for the UK in fear of "white terror" under the Hong Kong national security law. In an email to his friends and colleagues, he wrote, "[t]he white terror sweeping through Hong Kong is far from over and the near-term prospects of things getting better are simply non-existent". [18] [19] He told the Financial Times that he had been targeted by pro-Beijing people. He said, "[t]hey have this band of people who are not officially sanctioned... who go around threatening anybody who has, so called, stepped out of line. Unfortunately, I was one of those. [The person] said quite aggressively... 'you better watch your step, we are coming for you.'" [8] Reflecting in Hong Kong Free Press on his departure, Vines wrote that "loving Hong Kong has become a suspect activity". [20]
Vines, along with several other former Hong Kong residents, ultimately settled in the English town of St. Albans. [1]
Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee is a Chinese politician. She is currently the Convenor of the Executive Council (ExCo) and a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo), as well as the founder and current chairperson of the New People's Party. She was formerly a prominent government official of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and was the first woman to be appointed the Secretary for Security to head the disciplinary service. She is also the founder and Chairwoman of Savantas Policy Institute, a think-tank in Hong Kong.
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Edward Yau Tang-wah, GBS, JP is a Hong Kong politician. He was the Secretary for the Environment from 2007 to 2012, and from 2012 to 2017, he was the Director of the Chief Executive's Office of Hong Kong. He served as Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development from 2017 to 2022.
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Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) is a free, non-profit news website based in Hong Kong. It was co-founded in 2015 by Tom Grundy, who believed that the territory's press freedom was in decline, to provide an alternative to the dominant English-language news source, the South China Morning Post, and to cover the pro-democracy movement.
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Chris Tang Ping-keung is a Hong Kong law enforcement administrator who has been serving as the Secretary for Security of Hong Kong since June 2021. Tang joined the Hong Kong Police Force in 1987 immediately after his graduation from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a bachelor of social science in social work. He previously served as the Commissioner of Police of Hong Kong from 2019 to 2021, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Operations) from 2018 to 2019, and Director of Operations of the Hong Kong Police Force from 2017 to 2018.
The Pulse is a Hong Kong weekly current affairs television program produced by RTHK that airs on RTHK TV 31, which provides in-depth reports and interviews on current issues in Hong Kong, mainland China and the rest of the world. Created by its first executive producer Gary Pollard, the series broadcast its first episode on January 7, 2005. The programme is hosted by Stephen Vines, a Hong Kong-based writer and journalist.
Hong Kong Connection, formerly The Common Sense, is a long-running news documentary television programme produced by Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK. It mainly covers Hong Kong politics, economics, education, disadvantaged, environmental protection, the current situation in China, international affairs, etc. The programme premiered on 5 March 1978.
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