The Chinese-owned Bauhinia Cultural Group acquired a 21% stake in Phoenix TV last week, taking over the company and launching a “Sing Hong” campaign in Hong Kong. The picture shows Phoenix founder and former chairman Liu Changle at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2006.
Phoenix TV, based in Hong Kong, changed ownership last week. Its 21 percent stake was acquired by Bauhinia Culture Holdings Limited, a Chinese Communist Party “cultural central enterprise” established in February this year. The Bauhinia Group will not only build Bauhinia House in Hong Kong, but also launch the “Sing Hong” campaign advocated by the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong. This has led Phoenix, which had been trying to hide its Chinese Communist background, to tear off its mask and openly conduct a Chinese Communist propaganda brainwashing campaign in Hong Kong.
Liu Changle liquidates his shares
Phoenix founder and chairman Liu Changle liquidated almost all of his 37.93% shares last week, with 21% sold to Bauhinia Cultural Group and 16.93% sold to Macau gambling queen Pansy Ho’s Shun Tak Group. But Liu Changle’s sale price of $0.61 per share is nearly 22 percent cheaper than Phoenix’s closing price of $0.78 last week.
Previously, Liu Changle and his family members all withdrew from the management, and Shun Tak Group has stated that it “will not participate in the management and operation”, the Bauhinia Group has thus become the largest shareholder of Phoenix Satellite Television and started to take full control.
Top Chinese officials openly take control
In February this year, at almost the same time as the establishment of Bauhinia Culture Group, there was a change in the top personnel of Phoenix TV, with Xu Wei replacing Liu Changle as CEO, and Sun Yusheng, who was formerly the deputy editor-in-chief and deputy director of CCTV, becoming executive vice president and editor-in-chief, in charge of planning, style, content and production of programs.
Xu Wei has previously served in the Communist Party’s propaganda department, as director of Shanghai Oriental TV and deputy director of Shanghai’s Foreign Propaganda Office (Information Office and Internet Information Office), and his last position before Phoenix TV was secretary of the Party Committee of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
The Bauhinia Cultural Group, which was established in Hong Kong only in February this year, is considered one of the four major state-owned enterprises of the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong, with management transferred from senior Chinese Communist Party officials and an administrative rank of deputy minister. Its chairman and party secretary, Mao Chaofeng, previously served as a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Hainan Provincial Committee and executive vice governor, as well as secretary of the provincial political and legal committee, responsible for state security and public security work.
Wen Hongwu, general manager of Bauhinia Culture Group, has been secretary-general of the CPC Liaison Office in Hong Kong (Liaison Office) since 2018, while for the previous nine years he had been in control of the United Publishing Group, which has just been incorporated under Bauhinia; Li Haitang, editor-in-chief of Bauhinia magazine, had also originally held a ministerial post in the Liaison Office.
At the National People’s Congress of the Communist Party of China in early March this year, Mao Chaofeng, as a deputy to the National People’s Congress, had already participated as chairman and party secretary of the Bauhinia Cultural Group.
Phoenix Satellite Television has been the CCP’s big outreach
Founded on March 31, 1996, Phoenix TV is the only foreign media that can land in mainland China. Although based in Hong Kong, it holds a “non-domestic television program service license” and has been broadcasting in Mandarin, not Cantonese, which is spoken in Hong Kong, since the beginning. It currently has six television channels: Chinese Channel, Info Channel, Europe Channel, America Channel, Movie Channel and Hong Kong Channel, and is said to have an audience of over 360 million.
Phoenix’s news reporting stance is consistent in principle with the official Chinese Communist Party media, but the format often picks sensitive topics of interest to mainland Chinese. Former Phoenix News Director Pang Zhong said Phoenix TV is actually a window for the Chinese Communist Party in overseas media, and has always played a role of “a small scolding but a big help.
Last June, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) denied a Phoenix-owned station’s application to broadcast Chinese programming to Southern California, saying it was hiding its Chinese Communist Party holdings. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) even made it clear that “Phoenix is a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party, broadcasting its propaganda programs across the United States.”
At an April 6 White House press conference last year, a Phoenix reporter was asked twice by then-President Trump for questions that “sounded more like statements than questions,” asking “Who do you work for? China (Communist Party)?” The reporter, on the other hand, said that Phoenix was not a Communist media outlet because it was “based in Hong Kong” and “not state-run.
Hong Kong’s “singing red” mode begins
At the end of March, Bauhinia Cultural Group made its official debut in Beijing, hosting the “Sing a Song for the Party”, a large-scale thematic choral event to glorify the Communist Party of China and celebrate the centenary of its founding. At the launch ceremony, Wang Xiaohui, Executive Vice Minister of the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee, attended the event in a high-profile manner, seemingly not concealing the identity of Bauhinia Group as a propaganda organization directly under the CPC.
The Bauhinia Cultural Group has launched this large-scale “singing the Red” campaign in Beijing, and will soon extend it to Hong Kong by organizing a choral fellowship between Hong Kong and Macau students and mainland students to brainwash the people of Hong Kong, especially the young people of Hong Kong.
About Bauhinia Culture Group
Bauhinia Cultural Group is mainly engaged in the business of news publishing and film and television, and its total assets have reached hundreds of billions of Hong Kong dollars. It has integrated four major Chinese-owned publishers in Hong Kong, including United Publishing Group, Bauhinia Magazine, Yindu Organization and China Culture City, etc. Among them, United Publishing Group has the famous Sanlian Bookstore, China Bookstore, Commercial Press, Wanli Organization and Hong Kong United Book Logistics, etc. It controls various aspects of publishing, distribution, retailing and printing.
With the acquisition of Phoenix TV, the group has used its television channels in Europe and the United States, as well as Hong Kong’s advantage of bringing together Chinese and Western cultures, to enhance the CCP’s so-called “soft power” and strengthen the brainwashing of Chinese people, including those in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
In addition, the Bauhinia Culture Group is buying land in Hong Kong and plans to build its headquarters in Hong Kong, the Bauhinia Tower.
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