About Christian Times

Christian Times

Christian Times (Chinese: 時代論壇; pinyin: Sidai Luntan) is a Chinese-language weekly newspaper published in Hong Kong for the territory's Christian community. Founded in 1987 and issued weekly, it reports church news, theology, education and Hong Kong social and political affairs from a Christian perspective, and is generally described as an independent, pro-democracy-leaning voice within Hong Kong's press. Alongside the Catholic Kung Kao Po, it is one of the two long-running Christian newspapers in Hong Kong, serving pastors, congregations and Christian schools and organisations across the territory. Its editor-in-chief Lo Man Wai, writing in Christianity Today in March 2024, summarised its beginnings directly: the Chinese-language Christian Times started in 1987 as a small weekly newspaper, and through news stories, features, opinions and devotions it reflects on social issues from a Christian perspective.

Founded in 1987 as a small weekly

The paper's founding year places it in a particular Hong Kong moment. The Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 had settled the city's return to China in 1997, and Hong Kong's churches — like the rest of civil society — were debating what the future would mean for religious life, education and public witness. It was in that decade, in 1987, that Christians in the city were also organising for a public voice: an oral-history record at Hong Kong Baptist University, for example, describes the founding of the Christians for Hong Kong Society in the same year by Christians convinced that believers should have their voices heard on social events. Christian Times emerged from that milieu as a small weekly newspaper, and it has kept the weekly rhythm and the Chinese language ever since, growing from a small paper into what its editor calls a Christian news platform, publishing in print and online for a readership of pastors, congregations, Christian schools and organisations.

Journalism first: what distinguishes it

Lo Man Wai's 2024 account is explicit about the paper's identity: what differentiates Christian Times from other Christian publications in Hong Kong is its focus on journalism. Many church publications are devotional, denominational or promotional — house organs carrying an organisation's own news. Christian Times instead practises news reporting: it conveys discussions among Christians of different denominations and theological backgrounds, and it covers the church as a subject — its disputes, its finances, its losses and its public actions — as well as speaking to it. Its pages combine news stories, features, opinions and devotions, so reporting on social issues from a Christian perspective sits alongside theology, education coverage and reflective writing. That interdenominational, journalistic stance explains both its reputation as an independent voice within Hong Kong's press and its usefulness to researchers: it is one of the few places where the Hong Kong church's internal debates are recorded in public, in Chinese, week by week.

Alongside Kung Kao Po: Hong Kong's two Christian newspapers

The candidate record pairs Christian Times with Kung Kao Po as the two long-running Christian newspapers in Hong Kong, and the pairing maps the city's Christian divide. Kung Kao Po, the Catholic paper published by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, was first circulated on 1 August 1928 and is one of Hong Kong's oldest surviving newspapers, with an English-language sister paper, the Sunday Examiner. Christian Times, founded nearly sixty years later, serves the Protestant and independent churches, which have no single diocesan publisher. Between them, the Catholic weekly of 1928 and the Protestant-leaning weekly of 1987 have chronicled Hong Kong Christianity across the colonial era, the 1997 handover and the decades since — a two-paper religious press unlike anything on the Chinese mainland, where no equivalent independent Christian newspapers exist.

Covering the church: emigration, vacancies and finance

In recent years the paper's church reporting has documented a community under demographic pressure. Lo writes that local churches are experiencing a brain drain as congregants and pastoral staff leave Hong Kong for the United Kingdom and other countries; that churches increasingly face financial shortfalls as congregations shrink and the post-COVID economy struggles; and that while Christian Times itself has not seen a mass exodus like some local churches, where up to half of a congregation has left, recruiting staff has become difficult, with few applicants for posts and fewer willing interns, volunteer reporters and photojournalists than in the past. The paper is also part of the labour market it reports: Christian organisations, churches and members of the local Christian community are its main advertisers, its readers support it through subscriptions and donations, and for a few years after the political changes, recruitment advertising surged as churches sought to fill vacancies left by emigration — in the latter half of 2023 alone, a total of 222 churches posted openings on its site and on denominational sites — before the number of such advertisements began dropping in late 2023 amid the city's economic decline.

Social reporting and the weak: the contact-tracing story

The editor's account gives a concrete example of the paper's social reporting and its stated mission — that in a tightening society, the voices of the weak and the powerless are increasingly overlooked, and an independent medium can give those voices a platform. In 2021, a year after the implementation of the national security law, the Hong Kong government planned to require all citizens to install a COVID-19 contact-tracing app, to be shown on entering public premises — a measure that threatened to bar poor or homeless people without smartphones from essential facilities such as bathrooms, hospitals and markets. Organisations working with that population feared that publicly discussing the issue could breach the new law. One Christian nonprofit nevertheless interviewed people who would be affected and published the recordings; Christian Times and several other local media decided to cover the story despite the risks. Soon afterwards, the government amended the measure so that people without smartphones could obtain letters from social workers allowing them to register by hand at entrances. Lo is careful not to claim the change as the paper's achievement; his point is editorial — that covering the story was, in his words, the right thing to do, in line with the paper's conviction, citing Matthew 25, that more people should care about the poor, the weak, the sick, the homeless and those in prison.

Publishing under pressure after 2020

The same 2024 essay is the fullest public account of the conditions under which the paper now works. Since the implementation of the first national security law in 2020, Hong Kong has undergone what Lo calls a seismic shift: pro-democracy newspapers and websites have shut down, Hong Kong has sunk in press-freedom rankings, and a sense of fear permeating civil society causes citizens to self-censor. Christian Times feels the tightening directly: more writers and sources prefer to remain anonymous, and it is difficult to find Christians willing to share heartfelt opinions with readers because of the need to self-censor. Editorial decisions require calculating an undefined official red line — the government does not state clearly where it lies, and touching it would be catastrophic — so the desk sometimes decides a risk is not worth taking, and sometimes acts in faith. Lo wrote as Hong Kong's legislature passed its own national security legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law in March 2024, against treason, sedition, insurrection, espionage and collaboration with external forces; he also noted a survey finding that Hong Kongers rated freedom of religion above average while rating speech, press and association below it, and his open question — whether religious freedom can remain independent of the other freedoms — frames the uncertainty in which the paper continues.

Why it stays

Asked, in effect, why he is still running a Christian news platform in Hong Kong, Lo's answer defines the paper's present mission. He does not blame those who leave — leaving, he writes, is a rational decision as freedoms crumble — but while people can go, the church cannot: there are still people in Hong Kong who need to hear the gospel, and the Christian community still needs information to understand current reality and make wise judgments. The mission is, in his account, even more necessary than before, because an authoritarian government can easily overlook the weak and the vulnerable, and because Christians need access to the truth about what is happening around them. The paper asks its readers, finally, for prayer — that it can continue to serve the Christian community faithfully, providing truth and keeping a written history of what is happening in the city. That phrase, a written history, captures the archival value of a weekly that has recorded Hong Kong church life continuously since 1987.

Readership and significance

Christian Times serves pastors, congregations and Christian schools and organisations across Hong Kong — a defined community readership, reached through subscriptions, donations, church advertising and its online platform. Its significance is threefold. It is, with Kung Kao Po, one of only two long-running Christian newspapers in Hong Kong, and the principal journalistic voice of the city's Protestant and independent churches. It is an independent, pro-democracy-leaning presence within a press landscape from which most pro-democracy titles have disappeared since 2020. And it is a primary source: nearly four decades of weekly reporting on the Hong Kong church — its growth, its debates over 1997, its emigration waves and its life under the national security laws — written from inside the community it serves. Few Hong Kong institutions of its size carry that combination of community service and historical record.