Sharon Cheung
Sharon Cheung is a Hong Kong-based journalist and entrepreneur. She graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1995. She worked for the South China Morning Post from 1995 through 1998 and Hong Kong Cable Television News and Radio Television Hong Kong thereafter. She received the Outstanding Performance Award from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2003.
According to an interview conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong's The Varsity newspaper in April 2004, Cheung aspired to be a journalist since watching televised footage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests of June 4, 1989. Sharon is quoted as saying “I was impressed by the hero who stood in front of the tanks, bravely striving for democracy.”
On October 27, 2000, Cheung interviewed then-Communist Party General Secretary of China Jiang Zemin. In this interview, Jiang denounced her and the Media of Hong Kong more broadly as "too simple, sometimes naïve". The interview is conducted mainly in Mandarin Chinese; the video has English subtitles. Bits of Cantonese and English can be heard in the interview, and the "too simple, sometimes naïve" quote can be found at 1:43 through 1:50 in the video. Jiang claimed she was trying to "create big news" by skewing his words in support of Tung Chee-hwa for re-election as the Chief Executive of Hong Kong. After Jiang said he supported Tung, Cheung questioned whether Jiang Zemin had appointed Tung in the election, which made Jiang Zemin angry. Jiang contended that "Mike Wallace of the U.S.A. is at a much higher level than you are." The interview went on to become one of the three foundational works of the Chinese internet subculture of "Toad Worship".
In May 2015, she set up the Lion Rock Spirit Fellowship for journalists from Hong Kong to pursue the Reuters Institute's Journalism Fellowship Programme at the University of Oxford.
Sharon Cheung went on to be a senior vice president of Media Asia Entertainment Group, and is now teaching journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She advocates for press freedom in China and Hong Kong. In a 2004 interview, Cheung said “the mainland government sees the media as a propaganda tool, to promote its views. However, the Hong Kong government considers the media to be watchdogs that supervise what the government does.”
Cheung is now an entrepreneur and works to advise firms on their new media strategies.
