About Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Branch

Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Branch

Overview

The Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Branch is the Hong Kong branch of Xinhua News Agency, China's official state news agency, and it serves as the Asia-Pacific headquarters of Xinhua. It is headquartered at 381 Queen's Road East, Wan Chai, Hong Kong. No other Xinhua posting carries quite the same historical weight: for half a century, under British rule, the Hong Kong branch was far more than a news bureau. It acted as Beijing's de facto embassy in the colony — the quasi-official representative office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and of the People's Republic of China — while its editorial office carried on the ordinary work of a news agency. In January 2000 that dual existence was formally ended: the representative functions passed to the newly established Hong Kong Liaison Office, and the branch continued purely as a news organisation, in the limited-company form Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Branch Limited, founded on 17 January 2000.

Origins in 1946–1947

The branch's origins lie in the Chinese civil war period. In late October 1946, Qiao Guanhua arrived in Hong Kong with instructions from the CCP Central Committee to negotiate with the British Hong Kong authorities and publicly establish a branch of Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong, with their recognition. Qiao later recalled that the authorities responded very quickly and agreed: Xinhua's news materials could be collected in Hong Kong and printed for subscription, and he regarded the agreement as the first time in history that the British Hong Kong authorities had established relations with the party. Before the branch, the CCP had established the New South China News Agency in Hong Kong at the end of 1945, a name used because the British authorities did not agree to the originally intended Xinhua South China Branch name.

On 1 May 1947, the Hong Kong branch of Xinhua News Agency was officially established, with Qiao Guanhua as its first president. Its offices were two units on the third floor of 172 Nathan Road, Kowloon, taken over from the Dongjiang Column's Hong Kong office, in a small apartment building with a family bakery on the first floor. The branch began with 15 people, including three editors from the Hong Kong Zhengbao, five radio operators from the South Bureau's underground radio station and five staff of the Dongjiang Column Hong Kong Office. Its main work was to copy the telegrams from headquarters, edit them into English and Chinese versions and send them to media in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia; in those early days it did not conduct interviews in Hong Kong. As the CCP's representative, Qiao frequently negotiated with the British authorities and mixed with Western journalists stationed in Hong Kong, and the branch served as the only external window for the liberated areas at that time.

The De Facto Embassy

After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the branch's representative role deepened. When the United Kingdom recognised the People's Republic on 6 January 1950, Britain nevertheless firmly refused to allow the PRC to send a formal official representative office to Hong Kong, arguing it would create "two power centres." A consulate general was suggested instead, but accepting one would have implied recognising Hong Kong as a British colony, while the PRC maintained that Hong Kong was Chinese territory. Deadlocked, the two sides continued the civil-war practice: the Xinhua Hong Kong Branch remained Beijing's official representative office in the city, handling Sino-British contacts. The branch's news team had by then expanded to more than 50 people, alongside an administrative team for negotiations with the Hong Kong government.

The arrangement endured for decades. Because the branch was, in effect, an embassy under a news agency's name, its directors were figures of diplomatic rank. They included Zhou Nan, a former ambassador to the United Nations and vice-minister of foreign affairs who later negotiated the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong's future, and Xu Jiatun, also vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee. The news agency name was, as reference accounts put it, a temporary name used because China and the United Kingdom could not reach agreement on Beijing's official representative office — a temporary arrangement that lasted from 1947 to 2000.

Big Xinhua and Little Xinhua

Within Hong Kong, the branch was long divided into two parts, known by their nicknames. "Big Xinhua" — the Big Agency — was the Hong Kong and Macao Working Committee of the CCP, the party organisation in Hong Kong, responsible for political and representative work. "Little Xinhua" — the Small Agency — was the Editor-in-Chief's Office of the Hong Kong branch, located at 5 Sha West Street, Wan Chai, under the leadership of Xinhua headquarters in business terms and handling the news business: receiving headquarters telegrams, editing them into Chinese and English versions, and sending them to media in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

This division explains the branch's double character in the historical record. Scholars who studied it described its overt and covert functions: an ordinary wire service on the surface, and beneath it the principal channel through which Beijing dealt with the colonial government, supervised mainland-linked organisations in the city and conducted united-front work. Both halves bore the same Xinhua name, which is why the branch's history belongs as much to diplomatic history as to journalism history.

Crises and Turning Points

The branch's history was marked by the crises of Hong Kong's twentieth century. On 11 April 1955, the Kashmir Princess aircraft carrying PRC staff and journalists from Hong Kong to the Bandung Conference was destroyed by a bomb placed on board before take-off; Huang Zuomei, then president of the Hong Kong branch, was among those killed, and Sino-British relations became tense. In 1956, the Double Tenth Riots further deteriorated relations, after which Zhou Enlai set out three conditions for maintaining the long-term status quo: Hong Kong should not be used as an international anti-China military base, should not be used to subvert China, and Chinese institutions and personnel stationed in Hong Kong should be protected.

Leadership of the branch reflected its political importance. Liang Weilin, a senior revolutionary from the Dongjiang anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition, served as president for nearly twenty years from October 1959. In 1983, as Sino-British negotiations on Hong Kong's future entered their substantive stage, Xu Jiatun — a member of the CCP Central Committee and first secretary of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee — was appointed president of the branch and secretary of the Hong Kong and Macao Working Committee. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Beijing required all Chinese officials in Hong Kong to return to Beijing to re-register, in effect a political review; in 1990 Xu Jiatun fled to the United States, and in 1991 the branch's economic director, Chen Zhesheng, fled to France.

The 2000 Reorganisation

Hong Kong's return to China on 1 July 1997 removed the original reason for the branch's dual role: Beijing no longer needed an unofficial embassy in a city that was now a Special Administrative Region of China. On 28 December 1999, Premier Zhu Rongji chaired the 24th executive meeting of the State Council, which decided that from 18 January 2000 the Hong Kong branch of Xinhua News Agency would be renamed the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, with the branch president and vice-president becoming the Liaison Office's director and deputy director.

The change was announced on 17 January 2000, and at 10 a.m. on 18 January 2000 a simple unveiling ceremony was held outside the office building. The former branch was reorganised: its non-news functions were transferred to the new Hong Kong Liaison Office, while the news operation was reconstituted as Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Branch Limited — the limited company founded on 17 January 2000 — and continued to engage in the news business. Zhang Guoliang was appointed director of the new Hong Kong SAR Bureau, as the journalistic operation was also known. From that date, the Hong Kong presence of Xinhua has been, formally and solely, a news agency — the journalistic "Little Xinhua" surviving as the whole institution.

Asia-Pacific Headquarters

The modern branch's significance within Xinhua is regional as well as local: it serves as the Asia-Pacific headquarters of Xinhua News Agency, one of the regional headquarters through which Xinhua organises its worldwide bureau network. Xinhua, founded in November 1931 as the Red China News Agency and renamed Xinhua in the 1930s, is the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China; by 2021 it had 181 bureaus globally and publishes news in multiple languages. Its regional headquarters include Hong Kong, from where the Asia-Pacific operation is coordinated.

The branch's headquarters stand at 381 Queen's Road East in Wan Chai, in the building associated with the Cosmo Hotel. Wan Chai had been the branch's journalistic home for decades — the old "Little Xinhua" editorial office stood at 5 Sha West Street in the same district — and the Queen's Road East address continues that geography into the branch's modern life as a regional headquarters.

The Branch in Recent Years

The branch remained a symbolically charged presence in Hong Kong long after its diplomatic role ended. On 2 November 2019, during the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, protesters damaged the glass and gates of the Xinhua Hong Kong branch building and threw Molotov cocktails into the lobby — an attack on the building precisely because of what the name Xinhua had historically represented in the city. Xinhua strongly condemned the vandalism of its Asia-Pacific headquarters' offices.

Assessment

The Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Branch is best understood as two institutions in sequence sharing one name. From 1947 to 2000 it was a hybrid: a functioning news agency whose editorial office turned headquarters telegrams into Chinese and English releases for Hong Kong and Southeast Asian media, wrapped around Beijing's de facto mission to British Hong Kong, led at times by diplomats who negotiated the city's future. Since 18 January 2000 it has been a news organisation alone — the Hong Kong SAR branch of Xinhua, registered locally, headquartered on Queen's Road East, and serving as Xinhua's Asia-Pacific headquarters. Its long double life makes it one of the most historically distinctive branches in any world news agency's network.