2021 in Review: Looking Back at Our Guest Speaker Events

As the COVID-19 pandemic entered its second year, life in Hong Kong continued to be far from normal, and the Foreign Correspondents’ Club was no exception to the rule. Much like 2020, our ability to plan in-person events this year was severely reduced by government restrictions that prevented us from hosting our popular club lunches. (We organized plenty of Zoom events, however.)

Fortunately the situation improved in the second half of the year, and in August we were able to resume inviting notable guest speakers to the club. Here’s a look back at the lineup of speakers we hosted in 2021.

August 12: Matthew Marsh

For our first in-person speaker event of the year, Fox Sports Asia analyst (and FCC member) Matthew Marsh gave a behind-the-scenes look at F1 in the age of COVID.

“As a journalist, being able to talk to other journalists, being able to talk to team people, being able to watch the way they behave is critical,” Marsh said, comparing the experience of firsthand, in-person reporting versus remote reporting.

The flip side of that is… when I interview drivers on Zoom or whatever it is we’re using, it’s better. Would you believe?” he said.

September 1: Dr. Trisha Leahy

Dr. Trisha Leahy, chief executive officer of the Hong Kong Sports Institute (HKSI), joined the FCC for an in-person discussion about the lead-up to Hong Kong’s Olympic success.

“These are the results of the system we’ve been building for the last eight to 12 years,” Leahy said.

September 2: Harry Harrison

For over 20 years, award-winning political cartoonist Harry Harrison has put pen to paper satirizing Hong Kong life and politics for the South China Morning Post. Having recently released a new book, Add Ink: Cartoon Chronicles of Life in Hong Kong, Harrison appeared at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club to discuss his career and the process of drawing cartoons.

“I’m continuing doing what I do assuming I’m treading the right side of whatever invisible red line there. As far as I know, that’s what’s happening and they know what my cartoons are about. Either that or I’m sitting on a powder keg”, Harrison said.

September 14: Michael Schulman

In his insightful historical survey Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World, journalist and author Michael Schuman examines how the Chinese view their past and their place in the world—and how that affects their present policies and ambitions.

In a lunch talk at the FCC, Schuman said that his own experience of learning history had inspired the book.

“We are, I think, all in part shaped by our history and, more importantly, how we learn our history and how we perceive our history, or in some cases, misperceive our history,” Schuman said.

September 21: Regina Ip

Offering an overview of the relationship between China and Hong Kong, longtime public servant and politician Regina Ip, a member of the Executive Council and the Legislative Council, said that tensions between the mainland and the SAR were natural and to be expected. 

“The implementation of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ was never expected to be painless and trouble-free,” Ip said. “It is a bold and innovative concept, but the accommodation of a small but radically different system within a large, continental-size economy, is bound to be fraught with tensions and challenges.”

September 28: Mark O’Neill

In China’s Russian Princess: The Silent Wife of Chiang Ching-kuo, author Mark O’Neill tells the extraordinary and largely unknown story of how a factory worker named Faina Ipat’evna Vakhreva ended up married to the son of Chiang Kai-shek.

In a presentation at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, O’Neill recounted how Chiang and Vakhreva met while they were working, most unexpectedly, at the same heavy machinery plant in Yekaterinburg. She was born in Orsha in 1916 and fled war to the more favorably located Yekaterinburg. Chiang, meanwhile, had asked his father, Chiang Kai-shek, if he could study at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, where he excelled at learning Russian and drinking and dancing, among other things. 

October 11: David Yeung

The role raising livestock for meat consumption plays in increasing greenhouse gas emissions is well known, but as Green Monday CEO David Yeung explained, eating seafood should be considered equally bad. 

“There is a gigantic piece of the puzzle that is missing, that is not talked about and public awareness is extremely low, and it’s about the ocean,” Yeung said. He shared data showing that fishing has increased by 900% over the last 70 years, a trajectory that he called “utterly unsustainable.” 

October 12: Cheng Huan

In a lunch talk during which he shared his thoughts and reflections on the 2020 National Security Law passed by the central government, senior barrister Cheng Huan said that Hong Kong has a legal obligation to enact its own national security law under Article 23 of the Basic Law as soon as possible. 

“My biggest disappointment is that, for 17 years after 2003, one administration after another, and especially the members of LegCo, consistently failed to carry out their constitutional duty according to the Basic Law by not enacting Article 23,” Cheng said. “Because they failed to do so, Hong Kong now has a National Security Law imposed from above. This should never have been necessary.”

November 1: Biodiversity & Climate Change Panel

While COP26 took place in Glasgow, Laurence McCook of WWF Hong Kong, KPMG China partner Irene Chu and conservationist Dr. Billy Hau spoke at the FCC on November 1. During this lunchtime panel, the environmental experts spelled out Hong Kong’s ecological toll and outlined its role in creating a more sustainable world.  

The WWF ranks the city’s ecological footprint (measuring human demand on land and water) as the third worst in Asia-Pacific and 14th worst globally.

November 3: Afghanistan Panel

Nearly 20 years after the defeat of the Taliban in November 2001, a panel of journalists told an audience at the FCC that no one could have predicted the ease with which the Taliban regained control of Kabul this past August. 

CNN’s Anna Coren, who was on the ground in Afghanistan earlier this year, said that she and her colleagues sensed trouble because of the way in which the Taliban seized control of the provinces, but even they were surprised by what happened in Kabul.

“I don’t think in our wildest dreams we thought that the Taliban would just roll in on the 15th of August without a shot being fired, which is basically what happened,” Coren said. 

November 9: Herald van der Linde

Anyone looking to invest or have a better understanding of how Asia’s stock markets function shouldn’t be paying attention to the performance of the Dow Jones Index, said renowned market analyst Herald van der Linde during a lunch talk at the FCC. 

“You should look at what the bond market does first,” van der Linde said. “What happens there and how do we translate that back into the stock market?”

November 17: Capt. Alan Loynd

In a lunch talk at the FCC, Loynd discussed the highlights of his exciting and at times dramatic career, which included stints on cargo ships, passenger ships and avoiding attack in the Persian Gulf during the Iran–Iraq War, all of which is recounted in his recently published memoir All at Sea.

“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to go to sea,” Loynd said.