Yazhou Zhoukan (亚洲周刊) is a widely circulated Chinese-language weekly magazine in Asia, headquartered in Hong Kong. Michael O’Neill and Thomas Hon Wing Polin, who also established the magazine Asiaweek, created it in December 1987. The Ming Pao group owns this magazine after purchasing it from Times Warner in 1994. Yau Lop Poon is the editor-in-chief.
Recently, Yazhou Zhoukan selected the Hong Kong Police as its “People of the Year” for 2019. The top story of its most recent issue published 7,000 Chinese letters that praised the Hong Kong police as their “guardian angel” and the “anchor that stabilizes the sea,” which, at the critical moment, “impacted the path of history and safeguarded Hong Kong’s rule of law.” It called the Hong Kong police “the most twisted and most insulted” group but also the “most dependent and most respected group.” It claimed that it was all because of the police that the “Hong Kong people maintained their freedom without fear.”
Many people criticized Yazhou Zhoukan for lining up with the Chinese Communist Party and ignoring the simple facts in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong’s renowned Chinese-language fiction writer Dung Kai Cheung posted on his Facebook site that he refused to have his novel “Mingzi” named in Yazhou Zhoukan’s 2019 Top Ten Novel List.
Wang Dan, a student leader at the June 4th Student Movement and dissident from China, called for people to boycott the magazine. “There are plenty of media even without this one,” Wang wrote on his Facebook page. “We must take the bad media off the shelf!”
Source: Radio France International, January 4, 2020
http://www.rfi.fr/cn/港澳台/20200104-香港亚洲周刊评选香港警察为年度风云人物备受争议