[Book Talk] Political Censorship in British Hong Kong: Freedom of Expression and the Law (1842-1997)

Co-sponsors: UCLA Asian Pacific Center, UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, UC Davis East Asian Studies, UCI Center for Asian Studies, UCSD International Institute, UCSD 21st Century China Center, Pomona College Asian Studies

Date & Time: [Pacific Time] January 17, 2023 6pm [Hong Kong Time] January 18, 2023 10pm

Author Michael Ng (HKU) will be joined by discussant Kwai Ng (UCSD) to talk about his most recent book, Political Censorship in British Hong Kong: Freedom of Expression (1842–1997), in which he challenges the widely accepted narrative that freedom of expression in Hong Kong is a legacy of British rule of law.

This event is organized and hosted by Global Hong Kong Studies at University of California.

About the Book

Drawing on archival materials, Michael Ng challenges the widely accepted narrative that freedom of expression in Hong Kong is a legacy of British rule of law. Demonstrating that the media and schools were pervasively censored for much of the colonial period and only liberated at a very late stage of British rule, this book complicates our understanding of how Hong Kong came to be a city that championed free speech by the late 1990s.

With extensive use of primary sources, the free press, freedom of speech and judicial independence are all revealed to be products of Britain’s China strategy. Ng shows that, from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, Hong Kong’s legal history was deeply affected by China’s relations with world powers. Demonstrating that Hong Kong’s freedoms drifted along waves of change in global politics, this book offers a new perspective on the British legal regime in Hong Kong.

— Pip Nicholson, William Hearn Professor of Law and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (People and Community), Melbourne Law School

Source: Courtesy of Keith Tsuji.

About the Speakers

Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong

Dr. Michael Ng is a legal historian focusing on the legal history of modern China and Hong Kong. Dr Ng authored Political Censorship in British Hong Kong: Freedom of Expression and the Law (1842–1997) (Cambridge University Press), Legal Transplantation in Early 20th Century China: Practicing Law in Republican Beijing (1910s-1930s) (Routledge), and co-edited Chinese Legal Reform and the Global Legal Order: Adoption and Adaptation(Cambridge University Press) and Civil Unrest and Governance in Hong Kong: Law and Order from Historical and Cultural Perspectives (Routledge).

Dr. Ng’s works have appeared in leading journals such as Law and History Review, Law and Literature, Business History, International Journal of Asian Studies, among others. He has been appointed as visiting fellow of the University of Cambridge, visiting scholar of the University of Melbourne and the National University of Singapore, and visiting Associate Professor of National Taiwan University.

Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego

Dr. Kwai Ng is a professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at UC San Diego. He received his B.S. in journalism from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. His research interests include sociology of law, legal language, and social theory. He has conducted field research on the grassroots courts in China and the bilingual courtrooms in Hong Kong. He has recently completed a book manuscript on the Chinese courts.

Dr. Michael Ng (Author)

Dr. Kwai Ng (Discussant)

Political Censorship in British Hong Kong: Freedom of Expression and the Law (1842–1997)

(Cambridge University Press, 2022)