About Sing Pao Daily News

Sing Pao Daily News

Sing Pao Daily News, known in Chinese as Cheng Bao, is one of the oldest Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong. It was first published on 1 May 1939 by the Sing Pao Newspaper Company Limited under its founder, Ho Man-fat, initially appearing every three days before becoming a daily newspaper. In its heyday in the 1950s, Sing Pao accounted for almost half of the Hong Kong newspaper market, and it remained a familiar part of the territory's media landscape through decades of competition, ownership changes and repeated financial crises. The company's own figures in 2003 gave it a circulation of 100,000 copies reaching more than 220,000 readers, and the paper was sold not only in Hong Kong but also in Macau, Taiwan and mainland China. Its website is singpao.com.hk.

Founding and early dominance

Sing Pao was founded in the last years before the Second World War transformed Hong Kong. Ho Man-fat established the Sing Pao Newspaper Company in 1939 and launched the paper on 1 May of that year, at first on a three-day cycle and then as a daily as its readership grew. The timing placed it among the generation of Chinese newspapers created as Hong Kong's population and commerce expanded, and its longevity is its defining distinction: reference works routinely introduce it as one of the oldest Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong reporting on its later troubles described it as the territory's oldest Chinese-language newspaper.

By the 1950s Sing Pao's position was commanding. Accounts of the paper's history record that it accounted for almost half of the market in that decade, making it the default Chinese newspaper for a very large share of Hong Kong households. That dominance belonged to an era before television and before the great circulation wars of the later twentieth century, and it gave the Sing Pao name a depth of public recognition that later owners repeatedly relied on when the business itself faltered.

Competition and decline

The paper's competitive world changed twice. In 1969 Oriental Daily News appeared and became Sing Pao's most powerful competitor, pushing it into second place in the market it had once dominated. Then, in 1995, Apple Daily was launched with aggressive pricing and promotion. According to accounts of the period, Sing Pao did not respond to the new market conditions immediately, in part because of founder Ho Man-fat's health problems, and the resulting fall in sales inflicted heavy losses on the Sing Pao media business. The pattern set in those years, a famous and trusted masthead attached to a financially fragile company, shaped everything that followed in the paper's modern history.

Sections and readership

Sing Pao is organised as a general newspaper with a broad range of sections. Its local section carries Hong Kong headlines, an editorial column, local news and related soft news, together with a complaints board where readers can air grievances. Its international section covers international news, news from China, lighter international stories and profiles of international leaders, and the paper also runs a Weekly International News Highlights feature and a corner devoted to the Hong Kong Legislative Council, giving readers a quick overview of current affairs and a space to express their views. Further sections cover economics and Chinese business, finance, investment and property, alongside the entertainment and horse-racing coverage expected of a Hong Kong popular daily.

The paper has particularly targeted teenagers and younger readers, and it has been widely subscribed to by schools, a niche that kept it visible in classrooms even as its general circulation fell. In its digital experiments it introduced a PDA channel allowing readers to download the latest news, including politics, current affairs, international affairs, entertainment and horse-racing information, from the official Sing Pao website, an early attempt to carry a print brand onto mobile devices.

Credibility and criticism

Sing Pao's reputation with readers and with fellow journalists was measured in the Chinese University of Hong Kong's research on the reliability of Hong Kong newspapers. In the 2001 survey, scored out of a maximum of ten marks, Sing Pao received 6.48 from the public group and 5.89 from the group of journalists, placing it in the middle of Hong Kong's newspaper field rather than with either its most trusted broadsheets or its most sensational tabloids. Reference listings of the paper's political alignment describe it as pro-Beijing and leftist in orientation, while noting its opposition to the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government and to chief executives C. Y. Leung and Carrie Lam, an unusual combination that set it apart from other pro-Beijing titles.

The paper also attracted formal criticism. On 4 February 2003 a reader complained to the Hong Kong Journalists Association that Sing Pao had published the full name, address and picture of a victim in its pages, which the complainant said violated the victim's personal privacy. The episode is recorded among the standard accounts of the paper as an example of the ethical complaints that popular newspapers of its type periodically faced.

Ownership changes after 2000

In 2000, amid declining sales, Ho Man-fat sold Sing Pao for HK$150 million to Optima Media Holding; the purchaser was also stated as StarEastNet Limited and China Strategic Holdings Limited in accounts of the deal. The sale ended more than sixty years of founding-family control. In 2004 the mainland businessman Qin Hui bought Optima and changed its name to Strategic Media International, and control of the paper's parent passed through further hands in the following years, with chairmen changing repeatedly in the early 2010s. Former Birmingham City Football Club owner Carson Yeung later offered a loan of up to HK$60 million to the parent company, and Qin transferred his shares to Yeung in 2010.

Wage disputes and pension lawsuits

None of these ownership changes restored the paper's finances. Sing Pao was repeatedly reported to be in financial trouble through the 2000s, unable at times to pay employee salaries on time. In May 2004, twenty-three of its reporters, led by assistant chief editor Kwok Yin-ling, took sick leave together as a protest against management over pay. By June 2006 at least sixty employees had left the paper, the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority was suing Sing Pao over unpaid pension contributions, and the Labour Department was suing it over unpaid wages. In 2008 the paper was almost wound up over HK$4.2 million in unpaid staff pension contributions, and Yeung himself was later sentenced in 2014 to six years in prison for money laundering, further unsettling the company behind the newspaper.

The 2015 liquidation crisis

The paper's gravest crisis came in 2015. On 14 April that year its creditor Korchina Culture filed a statutory demand notice, and Sing Pao sought a loan of HK$110 million to meet its obligations. Annual reporting showed losses of more than HK$40 million for 2014, including more than HK$13 million in the third quarter alone. In July the company's bank accounts were frozen following the appointment of provisional liquidators, Edward Middleton and Tiffany Wong Wing-sze of KPMG, on 13 July, and the paper announced that its presses would fall silent temporarily. Publication ceased for several weeks from 17 July 2015.

Liquidation of the parent company

On 12 August 2015 the High Court ruled that the paper's indebted parent company, Sing Pao Media Enterprises, must be liquidated. Paradoxically, the liquidation of the parent secured the newspaper itself: with the debts ring-fenced in the liquidated company, the paper's immediate future was made safe and publication continued under chairman Gu Zhuoheng, who said he regretted the temporary halt to publishing. Hong Kong coverage of the episode framed it as the territory's oldest Chinese-language newspaper avoiding closure, in the same season that another Chinese daily, the Hong Kong Daily News, folded after fifty-six years.

Sing Pao's place in Hong Kong media

Sing Pao's story compresses the modern history of Hong Kong's Chinese press into a single title. It was founded in 1939, dominated its market in the 1950s, was overtaken by stronger competitors from 1969 onwards, was damaged by the Apple Daily revolution of the 1990s, and then passed through a long sequence of owners, wage disputes, pension lawsuits and court-ordered liquidations without ever entirely disappearing. Its survival rests on the same assets that appear throughout its record: a name recognised across generations of Hong Kong readers, a schools and youth readership that renewed its audience, and a general-news format broad enough to serve readers in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and the mainland. Few newspapers anywhere have combined that degree of historical significance with that degree of financial fragility for so long.