We’re Having a Chinese CNN

Chip Tsao
HK Magazine
19 March 2010

After announcing his $2 billion acquisition of the ATV broadcasting station as a major shareholder, up-and-coming Shanghai property tycoon Wang Jing laid out an ambitious plan to turn the channel into “Asia’s CNN” in 20 years. A bold sound-bite, only eclipsed a little later the same day when the ICAC arrested the GM of competitor channel TVB, Stephen Chan, on corruption charges. It seems neither ATV nor Chan were born under a lucky star.

In order to truly create “Asia’s CNN” out of China, Wang would have a lot of work to do. Money is no problem, but it’s human resources that worry me. In order to present the other side of the news, the side not monopolized by Western media cultural imperialism, a team of local Hong Kong war correspondents would have to be urgently trained to deploy to countries such as Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan to provide round-the-clock news bulletins. There is very limited manpower available in Hong Kong. Most of the reporters recently swarming Premier Wen Jiabao at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing struggling to extract a word of comment on Hong Kong’s state of play or the performance of Donald Tsang, looked like teeny-boopers or amateur Japanese porn stars. Paparazzi lurking around Lan Kwai Fong hoping for a snapshot of Edison will be prevented by their parents from taking a high-risk job like an Afghanistan assignment; Hong Kong’s film starlets will never answer a question with a volley of machine gun fire.

Wang will have to recruit some brave candidates from China, which is never in short supply of surprises. But even if he’s lucky enough to find a Chinese Mike Chinoy, would that correspondent be allowed to beam back a live story about a riot in Urumqi if a government building was just rocked by an Islamic suicide bomber there? Would he be permitted to have the same urgency as when on September 11, 2001, CNN’s journalist uttered the famous lines live on air, “You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That’s the famous World Trade Center, we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers”?

Would we get a program like “Crossfire,” anchored by hosts from both the left and right wing ideologies debating the issues of the day? Martin Lee locked in arguments with CY Leung on the prospects of universal suffrage in Hong Kong, watched by over 100 million Chinese households?

If this isn’t the case, the odds of any Hong Kong TV station becoming “Asia’s CNN” in 20 years is less likely than me becoming another Li Ka-shing in the next 20 months, or CNN evolving into America’s ATV if President Obama wins another term.

Chip Tsao is a best-selling author and columnist. A former reporter for the BBC, his columns have also appeared in Apple Daily, Next Magazine and CUP Magazine, among others.