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In Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises, there’s a famous line about going broke that could be an analogy for China and its brutal repression of the once-free press in Hong Kong. “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked in the novel. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
The analogy is apt for the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong (FCC), which I joined in 1997 and later served as president in 2004-2005. The club then was no longer the centre of the universe for China watchers, as the mainland had opened up and correspondents were basing themselves in Shanghai and Beijing. But Hong Kong and the club were still places that a free press and free speech could be practiced without the heavy hand of Beijing interfering.
The club was world-famous for hosting speeches by popular and not-so-popular – and often controversial – politicians, artists, writers, businesspeople, and thousands of others who were able to criticise China without fear of ending up in prison.
https://hongkongfp.com/2022/05/01/why-the-days-of-hong-kongs-foreign-correspondents-club-may-be-numbered/