The noose around the press in Hong Kong tightens
Even advocating press freedom begins to seem a bad career move
![SELINA CHENG meets local and international medias at the urgent press conference explaining how she was dismissed by Wall Street Journal](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240727_CNP001.jpg)
THE FIRST press conference Selina Cheng gave as chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), a trade union, on July 17th, was her last as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Ms Cheng says that, shortly after she was appointed, her supervisors at the newspaper ordered her to withdraw, because the two roles were “incompatible” (though her beat was the car industry, not politics), and that when she declined she was fired.
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This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “The state of the union”
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