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The
Times said its employees have faced challenges securing work
permits and it would move its digital team of journalists,
roughly a third of its Hong Kong staff, to the South Korean
capital over the next year.
The move delivers a blow to the city's status as a hub for
journalism in Asia, and comes as China and the United States
have clashed over journalists of each nation working in the
other.
This year, Beijing said journalists no longer allowed to work in
mainland China could not work in Hong Kong either.
"Given the uncertainty of the moment, we are making plans to
geographically diversify our editing staff," a spokeswoman for
the Times told Reuters.
"We will maintain a large presence in Hong Kong and have every
intention of maintaining our coverage of Hong Kong and China."
In a statement, the Hong Kong government said the city remained
a regional media hub.
Other international media, such as the Wall Street Journal, the
Financial Times and Agence France-Presse, also have their Asia
headquarters in Hong Kong.
Reuters moved its Asia headquarters to Singapore in 1997, the
year Britain handed Hong Kong back to China.
In another sign of the law's impact, former pro-democracy
lawmaker Au Nok-sin said on Wednesday he was stepping down over
Beijing's accusation that a primary election he helped organise
for Hong Kong's democracy camp was illegal and could amount to
subversion.
Hong Kong, at the time of its handover, was promised a high
degree of autonomy that has preserved the city's tradition of a
freewheeling press and allowed international media to use it for
headquarters in Asia.
The new law, which prescribes terms of up to life in prison to
punish what China broadly defines as secession, subversion,
terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, has stoked worries
about freedom of speech and media.
Authorities insist those freedoms remain intact but say national
security is a red line. Leader Carrie Lam has said reporters can
report freely if they do not violate the security law.
This year, Washington began treating five major Chinese
state-run media entities the same as foreign embassies, before
slashing to 100 the number of journalists allowed to work for
Chinese state media, from 160 before.
In retaliation, China said it was revoking the accreditation of
American correspondents with the New York Times, News Corp's <NWSA.O>
Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, whose credentials
expire by the end of 2020.
Beijing has also expelled three Wall Street Journal
correspondents, two Americans and an Australian, following an
opinion column in the paper that called China the "real sick man
of Asia".
(Reporting by Anne Marie Roantree and Marius Zaharia; Editing by
Michael Perry and Clarence Fernandez)
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