Mainland born Canadian founder of Kanwa Asian Defence magazine is relocating to Tokyo following disappearances of Hong Kong booksellers
MINNIE.CHAN@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Wednesday, 27 April, 2016, 6:18pm
Andrei Chang, centre, pictured in 2001 in Kabul, Afghanistan with fighters from the pro-US Northern Alliance who had just driven the Taliban from the city. Photo: Andrei Chang
Andrei Chang, the founder of the influential military magazine Kanwa Asian Defence, is leaving Hong Kong because he fears his safety as a journalist and publisher can no longer be guaranteed in the city.
He said he made the decision in the wake of the disappearance last year of five Hong Kong booksellers who had sold works critical of China’s government.
Chang said he believed that two of the five had been abducted by the mainland authorities and his faith in Hong Kong’s freedoms and legal system had been undermined.
Chang was born in Yunnan province on the mainland, but is a permanent Hong Kong resident and holds a Canadian passport.
“My wife and I decided in January to gradually move our home and office to when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the missing Hong Kong bookseller Lee Po as ‘first and foremost a Chinese citizen’.
“Wang’s remark reminded me that I am also first and foremost a Chinese citizen and then a
Hongkonger or a Canadian. So a few days afterwards, my wife and I went to the Hong Kong immigration office and cancelled our Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passports.”
The Kanwa Asian Defence Review, published by Andrei Chang. Photo: SCMP Pictures
Chang, who has reported extensively on the People’s Liberation Army and criticised corruption in China’s military, said he previously believed his Canadian passport would offer some form of protection operating as a publisher in Hong Kong, but the disappearance of the Causeway Bay booksellers had changed his view.
“I have visited so many places in the world, but I love Hong Kong very much. That’s why I moved all my family here in 2004.” he said.
“Hong Kong was so wonderful in 2004. There was freedom and justice. But now everything has changed.”
Chang said he had lost confidence in the principle of “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong since the controversy surrounding the booksellers.
“Hong Kong was so wonderful in 2004. There was freedom and justice. But now everything has changed.”
ANDREI CHANG, PUBLISHER
One of the five, Gu Minhai, disappeared in October last year in Thailand. He later told Chinese state television that he had turned himself into the authorities on the mainland for his involvement in a fatal road accident in Zhejiang province in 2003.
Another of the booksellers, Lee Ho, disappeared in Hong Kong in December. He later resurfaced and said he had gone to the mainland voluntarily to help with an investigation into the sale of banned books.
Chang, however, said he was not reassured by the booksellers’ comments.
“My China experience told me that all the mysteries surrounding Gui and Lee were actually cross-border kidnappings,” he said.
Andrei Chang in his office in Hong Kong. Another of Chang’s hobbies is playing the violin. Photo: SCMP Pictures
Jin Zhong, the chief editor of Open Magazine and a publisher of books on China, also left Hong Kong to join his family in New York earlier this year after the disappearance of the booksellers.
Chang set up Kanwa Asian Defence magazine in Toronto, Canada, in 1993.The Chinese version was first published after he moved to Hong Kong in 2004 with his Japanese wife.
He speaks several languages, including Chinese, Japanese, English and Russian. He is also a columnist for IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, Japan’sYomiuri Shinbun, Asahi Shimbun and other news outlets.
His expertise has helped him forge a reputation as one of the most authoritative military observers specialising in China.
However, he has been dubbed a “traitor” by some critics on the mainland because of his vocal criticism of corruption and the outdated operational methods of the People’s Liberation Army.
Over the past decade, Chang has received death threats on the internet during should he ever visit the mainland, which he has not visited for several years.
“I’m not scared [by the threats], but Wang’s words scared my wife,” said Chang. “I made the decision [to leave Hong Kong] because I should respect her.”
Chang said that Kanwa reports had also been falsified, exaggerated and tampered with by mainland official media, and used as a basis to attack him and his profession.
I’m not scared [by the online threats], but [Foreign Minister] Wang’s words scared my wife
ANDREI CHANG
“More than 90 per cent of mainland versions of Kanwa reports are incorrect. They [official media] use these to shame me in the style of the Cultural Revolution,” he said.
“I am still a Hongkonger wherever I go. Hong Kong’s future should be decided by the 7.8 million people of Hong Kong.”
He said their move to Japan was likely to be completed by next month, but the magazine would still be to be printed in Hong Kong.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1939125/defence-magazine-publisher-andrei-chang-quits-hong-kong-over-concerns
