The South China Morning Post began as a weapon for revolutionaries, not a business venture. On the 6th of November 1903, anti-Qing revolutionary Tse Tsan-tai and British journalist Alfred Cunningham published the first issue of what would become Hong Kong's newspaper of record. Tse Tsan-tai, a key figure in the movement to overthrow the Qing dynasty, used the newspaper to support the reform movement, while Cunningham provided the journalistic expertise. The early editorials were written by British journalists like Cunningham, Douglas Story, and Thomas Petrie, while Tse attracted business to the newspaper. The newspaper's circulation was a modest 300 copies in 1904, but it quickly gained a foothold in a city dominated by three other English-language newspapers: the Hong Kong Daily Press, China Mail, and Hong Kong Telegraph. The editors maintained a good relationship with the Hong Kong government, setting a precedent for the paper's future interactions with political power. This early period established the SCMP as a voice that could navigate the complex political landscape of colonial Hong Kong, balancing the interests of the British government with the aspirations of Chinese reformers.
The Profitable Powerhouse
For decades, the South China Morning Post was the world's most profitable newspaper, a status symbol for Hong Kong's elite. After the Second World War, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) bought majority shares in the newspaper, and it was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in November 1971. The paper was privatised again in 1987 after being bought by the News Corporation in 1986 for HK$2.2 billion (US$284.4 million). By 1993, the SCMP daily circulation exceeded 100,000 and posted profits of HK$586 million (US$75.6 million) from mid-1992 to mid-1993. Reading the SCMP has been described as a status symbol in the 20th century, when the newspaper represented the interests of Hong Kong elites and the British government. Editors of the SCMP attended regular meetings at the Government House for disclosures that aimed to influence public opinion and received business briefings from the HSBC. The paper's profitability was so significant that it became a target for acquisition, with Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation selling its controlling interest to Malaysian real estate tycoon Robert Kuok in 1993 for US$375 million. This era marked the SCMP as a financial powerhouse, but also as a paper that was deeply embedded in the political and economic structures of Hong Kong.The Editors Who Fled
The South China Morning Post has seen a series of editors who were forced to leave under pressure, often due to their critical stance on the Chinese government. Jonathan Fenby served as editor until 1999, when he was replaced by Robert Keatley from The Wall Street Journal. Mark Ländler of The New York Times wrote that under Fenby, the SCMP was sharply critical of the Hong Kong government, and this may have been a factor behind Fenby being replaced. In 1995, cartoonist Larry Feign was abruptly dismissed and his satirical comic strip Lily Wong was axed, a move widely viewed as political self-censorship in the face of the imminent handover of Hong Kong to the PRC. Nury Vittachi, a humour columnist, documented in his book North Wind that then-editor Jonathan Fenby suppressed letters querying the disappearance of the popular strip and then busied himself writing letters to international media that had covered the Feign case defending the sacking. Vittachi explained his own departure from the journal in his book, linking it to the pressures he and other contributors faced from top management and editors to abstain from writing on topics that were deemed sensitive. These departures were not isolated incidents; they were part of a pattern of self-censorship that began to take root as the paper's ownership shifted and the political climate in Hong Kong changed.