Academics move cautiously with sensitive information
Academics and journalists in Hong Kong admit they tread a tightrope when handling mainland-related information for overseas research institutes and foundations, particularly those from Taiwan or the United States.
Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, professor of political science at City University of Hong Kong, said many foundations and research centres on the mainland, in Taiwan and the US had government affiliations. He said he needed to be cautious to guard against leaking information Beijing considers state secrets.
'I will only use public documents [as] all the research and articles I have written will be published,' he said.
Professor Cheng said he deliberately refrained from accepting paid consultancy work.
For two years, he has attended activities in Hong Kong organised by the Foundation on International and Cross-Strait Studies. The Beijing court that this week convicted Hong Kong journalist Ching Cheong of spying for Taiwan named the foundation as his paymaster.
The foundation has also co-organised activities with Hong Kong academic institutions, including Lingnan University.
In a radio interview yesterday, veteran journalist Willy Wo-lap Lam said the foundation was quite active in Hong Kong. It had invited mainland and Hong Kong scholars and professors to Taipei.
Lam urged Beijing and Taipei to clarify the status of the foundation and others like it, otherwise, no one would like to attend activities organised by them in future.
Another veteran China watcher, Johnny Lau Yui-siu, said he had developed his own guidelines in dealing with information that may be deemed sensitive or confidential by the mainland.
'Official documents are divided into three categories - confidential, secret and top secret. My advice is not to touch even documents classified as confidential,' he said. 'More importantly, any research work and reporting work should not involve money.'
Mr Lau and Ong Yew-kim, a China law expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, agreed that if no money was involved, it would be easier for someone accused of a crime to offer a defence.
'When I was in Beijing, if I got sensitive information, I would wait and see instead of reporting it immediately,' said Mr Lau, who has worked for Beijing's mouthpiece newspaper Wen Wei Po since 1972.
