LOS ANGELES — Not every place in the world takes its news media seriously, to say the least. Some governments view it as a nuisance, if not a menace; others as an arm of public instruction, if not propaganda. But this is not the view taken here in what (since the 1997 handover from Britain) is officially called the Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. Here in what everyone else calls Hong Kong, the news media is taken very seriously.
In fact, this would increasingly appear to be the case. Notwithstanding all the dire predictions that absorption into media-repressive China would eventually castrate the feisty local press, the Hong Kong media has held its own.
Newspapers still bash the central government (though avoiding whenever possible the question of Taiwan). And TV and radio, especially, still operate with a measure of abandon. Political debate remains lively and, at times, charmingly neurotic.