The election of the Hong Kong Journalists Association’s (HKJA) committee on Aug 8 cannot be seen as a routine internal vote of a private professional body. In ordinary circumstances, the selection of an executive committee by a trade union would concern only its members. The HKJA, one of the local journalists’ unions, however, has never presented itself as an ordinary association. For decades, it has claimed a role of speaking for journalists, defending professional standards, and defining the meaning of press freedom in Hong Kong. Once an organization claims such a role, its own governance is subject to a legitimacy evaluation. The issue is therefore not simply whether the election can satisfy the minimum requirements of its constitution. The more serious question is whether the association still possesses the representative authority and institutional credibility required to speak on behalf of the profession.
The most revealing fact is that the election reportedly had to be postponed because the number of candidates initially fell below the required minimum. This is not a minor administrative inconvenience but a clear sign of organizational decline, indicating the association’s diminishing support among journalists. A genuinely representative professional body should be able to attract a broad and competitive group of candidates from across the industry. If it struggles even to assemble the required number of nominees, the public is entitled to ask whether the association still commands meaningful support among working journalists. An election held after such difficulty inevitably appears less like a contest of professional vision and more like an improvised effort to preserve a fading organizational shell.
The composition of the reported candidate list further sharpens this concern. The named individuals include an incumbent chairperson who works mainly as a freelancer for foreign media, a former chairperson associated with international political advocacy, a former BBC journalist, a photojournalist from a relatively small media outlet, and a retired foreign watchmaker who now describes himself as a freelance photojournalist. Each person may be entitled to run in the election if the rules allow it, but legitimacy is not created by technical eligibility alone. A body that claims to represent Hong Kong journalists should be visibly rooted in the mainstream newsroom community. It should show participation from major local media outlets, professional editors, frontline reporters and younger practitioners facing the daily pressures of the profession, rather than from some freelancers and retirees. The organization needs broad, diverse candidate participation to restore public confidence in its legitimacy and relevance.
The HKJA therefore faces a choice more serious than filling its executive seats. It can continue as a shrinking circle sustained by procedural formalities and symbolic defiance, or it can rebuild itself as a genuinely representative professional body. That would require open governance, broader participation from mainstream newsrooms, a serious effort to attract young journalists and a disciplined separation between genuine journalism and political campaigning. If it rejects that path, the association may still have a name, a charter, and an election mechanism. What it will lack is the one asset no professional body can manufacture by resolution: public trust
This is the essence of the association’s representative crisis. The problem is not the nationality, age, or employment status of any single candidate. The problem is the collective picture produced by the slate. It suggests that the HKJA has become increasingly detached from the ordinary structure of Hong Kong journalism. A union that cannot visibly draw support from the mainstream of the profession risks becoming a symbolic platform for a small group. In political terms, this is small circle governance: The governing body remains formally organized, but its renewal occurs within a small circle whose members share similar political instincts, public narratives and institutional habits. The procedure survives, but the social foundation beneath it has vanished.
Candidate shortage encourages leadership continuity. Leadership continuity reduces competition. Reduced competition strengthens the existing circle. The circle then becomes more defensive as public criticism increases. This is a familiar form of institutional decay. In political science terms, this is the reproduction of power within a restricted circle. In ordinary public language, it looks like clique control.
It is in this sense, and only in this sense, that the language of symbolic gang formation becomes analytically useful. The phrase should not be understood as a legal accusation or a claim of criminal conduct. It is a political metaphor describing a pattern of closure, loyalty, exclusion and internal consolidation. The metaphor has force in Hong Kong because the public is alert to black-box decision-making. It is even more powerful when applied to a journalists’ body, which claims to devote to public accountability but appears guarded about its own internal governance. The contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.
The political history of the HKJA makes the perception still more severe. Since the 2019-20 “black-clad” riots, many residents have viewed the association less as a neutral professional union and more as a participant in a wider political narrative. Its active interventions on protest, policing, prosecution and national security cases have often been received as partisan rather than professional. Some figures connected with the association have also been linked, directly or symbolically, with foreign political forums and Western campaigns critical of Hong Kong’s governing institutions. Whether such conduct is defended as “advocacy” or criticized as politicization, its public effect is plain. It makes the association appear aligned with a political camp rather than anchored in the ordinary interests of journalists.
When a journalists’ association persistently maintains a clear political posture, the body loses its neutrality and becomes a partisan group, losing the credibility to speak for the profession. The problem is not that journalists have political views. The problem arises when a professional institution turns those views into its dominant identity. At that point, its elections cease to look like professional renewal and begin to look like the internal management of a political faction.
The sharp public criticism from senior officials, including warnings about conduct that endangers national security, reflects the extent of this reputational collapse. In the present constitutional environment, organizations are judged by more than formal compliance. They are judged by their conduct, networks, public messaging and practical relationship with Hong Kong’s stability. A union that wishes to remain credible must understand that professional freedom cannot be separated from civic responsibility. It must show that its “concern” for journalism is not a cover for political confrontation, and that its institutional life is consistent with the openness it demands from others.
The HKJA therefore faces a choice more serious than filling its executive seats. It can continue as a shrinking circle sustained by procedural formalities and symbolic defiance, or it can rebuild itself as a genuinely representative professional body. That would require open governance, broader participation from mainstream newsrooms, a serious effort to attract young journalists and a disciplined separation between genuine journalism and political campaigning. If it rejects that path, the association may still have a name, a charter, and an election mechanism. What it will lack is the one asset no professional body can manufacture by resolution: public trust.
The author is a solicitor, a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area lawyer, and a China-appointed attesting officer.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
