Eastern Express (newspaper)


The Eastern Express was an English-language newspaper published in Hong Kong from February 1994 to June 1996 by the Oriental Press Group.

Background

In the early 1990s, the Hong Kong English-language newspaper market was dominated by the South China Morning Post and The Standard, a distant second, both of which were seen to have begun to favour the Chinese Communist Party line on Hong Kong in the remaining few years before handover of sovereignty in 1997. The Express was established with a mission to stop this tide of "strangulation" and the hope of securing a piece of the highly lucrative franchise of the Post.

Beginnings

Facing saturation in the Chinese-language newspaper business and hearing of a management shake-up at the Post, the chairman of Oriental, Ma Ching-kwan, saw an opportunity to slot a new English daily into the print capacity of their HK$200 million facility built in 1990. Ma recruited former Guardian bureau chief Steven Vines as its first chief editor, and two dozen reporters from the Post, Standard and Far Eastern Economic Review. Like Vines, many were veterans brought in on high salaries. The first edition was published on 1 February 1994.

Ulterior motive

It has been controversially suggested that the newspaper was established by Ma as part of a broader scheme of currying favour with the British Conservative Party and then Governor of Hong Kong Christopher Patten so as to head off narcotics trafficking allegations made against his two fugitive uncles, founders of the Oriental, one of whom was then resident in Taiwan.

Stiff competition

After nine months, the paper was struggling with sparse advertising and management upheaval. Vines had left and there was an ongoing search for a replacement. Circulation was languishing at somewhere around a sixth of the market leader, the Post. In the ensuing 19 months, a procession of five more chief editors ran the paper for Oriental.

Demise

Having run up accumulated losses of HK$150 million,, and just eight weeks after a last-ditch revamp, the paper closed abruptly on 29 June 1996, throwing about 65 editorial and production staff out of work. In a seemingly related development, Ma Ching-kwan lost his chairmanship of the holding company to his brother Ma Ching-fat with effect from 1 July 1996.