Hong Kong Commercial Daily

Hong Kong Commercial Daily
Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet
Owner(s) Shenzhen News Group
Editor Chen Xitian (陳鍚添)
Founded 1952
Political alignment n/a
Headquarters Hong Kong
Website www.hkcd.com.hk

The Hong Kong Commercial Daily (Chinese: 香港商報) (HKCD) is a business-oriented newspaper, published in broadsheet format. Established in 1952, it was the first financial newspaper in the Chinese language, with its electronic format available on the Internet. It is one of the few newspapers authorised by the Hong Kong SAR government to publicise legal announcements, and also the only Hong Kong newspaper allowed to be circulated freely in mainland China. With a branch office in Shenzhen, it has the largest circulation among Hong Kong newspapers in China.

History

Establishment

The HKCD was founded on 11 October 1952. The first issue was published on a Saturday with the selling price of only HK$0.10. In the foreword of the newspaper's launch, the paper claimed to aim at serving as the voice of the local Hong Kong commerce as, "everything to consider the Hong Kong people, everything to serve the local commerce". The paper aimed at candour and accuracy, and a focus on worldwide economies, especially in Hong Kong and China, to inform merchants and businessmen on the ever-changing economies around the world. In the earliest publications, the newspaper contained also the latest horse racing news from Happy Valley, Hong Kong, and on weekends, columns and serial short stories with pictures (e.g. the West Journey) were also published for the entertainment of the readers.

In the 70s

In the early 70s, the government asked HKCD to stop publishing its horse and dog-racing page, so, as not to promote gambling. The disappearance of those popular topics led to a severe decline in its circulation at that time.

In the 80s

In December 1989, its largest shareholding went to the Joint Publishing (HK) Company Limited (the joint company of The Commercial Press (H.K.) Ltd, Chung Hwa Book Co. and Joint Publishing)at the price of 160 million Hong Kong dollars.

In the 90s

In 1995, HKCD co-operated with the mainland publishing companies to co-publish its special mainland version. This helped in building up its news network and expanding its mainland newspaper market. Since 1996, its electronic version has been available on the internet.

In 2005

In May 2005, the paper was upgraded. Its standard selling price was $3 Hong Kong dollars within Hong Kong and overseas countries. In Mainland China, it is sold at $3RMB within Guandong Provinces and $5 RMB in other provinces. The new version of the paper emphasises news tailor-made for investors and business executives mostly from Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Economic Regions. It mainly focuses on economic issues so as to facilitate business between Hong Kong and China. The intention of the paper is to serve as a bridge, connecting both sides of the border. The content is more diversified. It contains the latest horse racing information, sports news, focusing on soccer and basketball, entertainment news and Hong Kong tourist information in a section called "Tour in Hong Kong" (香港游).

Contents

A typical edition contains about 30 pages. The largest the sections are:

News

Business

Property

Special features

Sports

Leisure

Technology

Editor

Cheng Xi Tian (陳鍚添)

Cheng Xi Tian is the current chief editor of the HKCD. Cheng was born on 8 February 1941 in Shanghai. Before he became the Chief Editor and Deputy of the HKCD, Cheng had been the editor of Shenzhen Publishing Group. At present, he is also a part-time professor in Renmin University of China (RUC) (中國人民大學) and Wuhan University (WHU) (武漢大學). He is a graduate from journalism of Renmin University of China in 1966 and has been working in the field of journalism for more than thirty years. Since he has written a number of newsletters, argumentative writings, reports, biography and prose etc., he was given the title "Unique Journalist" by Deng Xiao Ping(鄧小平) in 1992. On 26 March 1992, Cheng's Chinese publication 《东方风来满眼春》 highlighted the success of his career. This publication has won many awards in the press media of mainland China, e.g. "The first award of Chinese News" (中國新聞獎一等獎), "Special Price of Guangdong News" (廣東新聞獎特別獎), etc. In 2000, he was awarded the most honourable prize in the press in mainland (韜奮新聞獎).

Board

The paper is state-owned, controlled by the Liaison Office of the Central Government.[1]

Chairman and CEO

Huang Yang Lue (黃揚略)

Mr Huang Yang Lue is currently the chairman of the board of directors as well as the CEO of The HKCD. He was born in Suwen, Guangdong, and graduated from Zhongshan University(中山大學)in 1982. Immediately after his graduation, he entered the Xinhua News Agency in the Guangdong branch, where he worked as a reporter, assistant director and vice-president. He also is a part-time Professor at the Business School of Jinan University(暨南大學). In September 2002, he was appointed head of the Shenzhen News Group .

Advisory Board

There are more than 50 contributing advisors of the HKCD. For example: Dr. Tsang Hin Chi(曾憲梓), Dr. Leo Lee Tung-hai(李東海), Dr. Vincent Lo Hong-sui(羅康瑞), Dr. Robin Chan Yau-hing(陳有慶), Mr. Timothy Fok Tsun-ting(霍震霆)and Mr. Chan Wing-kee(陳永棋) .

Readership

Target reader groups

The target reader groups include investors and business executives in both China and Hong Kong, mainly from the Pearl River Delta and especially the Special Economic Zones. Employees of some Hong Kong companies which have based their businesses in mainland China, and politically-minded individuals with an interest in the HKSAR-PRC relation, are also an important target group. Its worldwide readership includes people from Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, the US, Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Indonesia (starts 28 Sep 2009, officially issued), etc..

Ranking by readers

According to a survey by the Department of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong, the credibility of HKCD is ranked 23rd among the media (for example, newspapers and magazines) in Hong Kong, scoring 4.9, while the most credible is the Hong Kong Economic Journal(scoring 7.38).

Readers' perception

RTHK and Breakthrough have conducted surveys and questionnaires for Hong Kong readers and journalists in Year 1998 and 2001 respectively. The findings reflect the credibility, political stance and popularity of a number of Hong Kong newspaper among the public.

The result of the surveys has been shown in the diagram.

Publication

Installments

In addition to reporting up-to-date business and financial issues, it also contains intellectual serials. For example, many of the martial arts novels written by Jinyong(also known as Louis Cha) from the 1950s like "Sword Stained With Royal Blood"《碧血劍》in 1956, The Legend of the Condor Heroes"《射鵰英雄傳》in 1957 etc, were published as instalments in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily.

Books

HKCD also publishes various kinds of books, while most are in Chinese, including "The Last episode of Ten Colonels"《十大元帥大結局》、"The Mystery of Xiaoshan"《韶山之謎》、"The Last 28 days of Cultural Revolution"《文革最后的28天》、"Horror and Anti-horror"《恐怖與反恐怖》、"Human and Ghost"《人鬼神》、"Force of China"《中國力量》. Many are on current political and economic issues. For its 30th anniversary in 1982 it published a book called "Knowledge of living" with useful information on health care, electrical appliances and useful telephone numbers in Hong Kong and Guangzhou etc.. Some feature stories and articles in the newspaper are later collected and published as books.

Website

The HKCD website (香港商報電子版-中國窗) was launched in 1996. It is written in both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese characters. The news is updated at midnight, before publication of the paper. People from all over the world can access freely the on-line news about Hong Kong, Mainland China and the world . Past news and features are accessible through a searchable archive.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Betsy Tse (9 April 2015). "Basic Law violation seen as LOCPG tightens grip on HK publishers". EJ Insight.

External links

Notes and references

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 3/10/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.