Hong Kong’s public broadcaster RTHK dropped a 24-hour BBC World Service channel from its airwaves on Monday Sep 04,2017, replacing it with state radio from China in what critics say is a sign of encroaching Chinese control in the former British colony. Tensions between Hong Kong and Beijing’s ruling Communist Party leaders have grown in recent years, particularly over the “Occupy” civil disobedience movement in 2014 when tens of thousands of protesters blocked roads for 79 days demanding full democracy. Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise of wide-ranging autonomy under a “one country, two systems” formula.
An online petition, titled “RTHK: Give us back our BBC World Service”, had been signed by nearly 1,000 people in a bid to keep the British broadcaster’s round-the-clock programming, saying the switch would make Hong Kong “feel more parochial and inward-looking”. However, Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), the city’s main public broadcaster, went ahead with scrapping the exclusive BBC channel at midnight on Sunday. Instead, China National Radio – a state-run outlet carrying no sensitive or critical reporting on China – would be broadcast on its own RTHK channel. The broadcasts are mostly in Mandarin, rather than the city’s main Cantonese dialect.
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