History
Wen Wei Po was founded in Shanghai in January 1938. The Hong Kong edition was first published on 6 September 1948.
In the 1980s, Xinhua News Agency, which served as the de facto Chinese embassy to Hong Kong, reduced its control over Wen Wei Po to reflect China's guarantee of "one country, two systems" after sovereignty over Hong Kong is transferred to China in 1997.[6]
In 1989, Wen Wei Po published an editorial criticizing the People's Liberation Army for its crackdown of protesters in Tiananmen Square. The paper reported what it claimed was a firsthand account from a 20-year-old Tsinghua University student, whose identity was kept confidential.[7] This account alleged that soldiers first set up over ten machine guns in front of the Heroes Monument and mass fired into the crowd of students inside Tiananmen square, and mowing them down.[7] The New York Times gave this supposed eyewitness account prominent display on 12 June, a week after the events. However, no evidence has ever confirmed the account or the existence of the supposed witness.[8] According to Jay Mathews writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, the story was not factual—all verified eyewitness accounts say that all students remaining in the square were allowed to leave peacefully—and that instead hundreds of workers and Beijing residents did die that night but "in a different place and different circumstances", which had included soldiers shooting many on the stretches of Chang'an Avenue, about a mile west of the square, and in scattered confrontations throughout the city, where some soldiers were beaten or burned to death by angry workers.[9] Lee Tze Chung, the president of the newspaper since 1951, was dismissed,[10] and editor-in-chief Kam Yiu-yu went into exile in the United States.[11] Following the dismissals, Wen Wei Po received financial support from the Chinese government to repair the image of China following the military crackdown in Beijing.[6]
In 2016, Wen Wei Po merged with Ta Kung Pao to form the Hong Kong Dagong Wenhui Media Group, which is under the control of the Hong Kong Liaison Office.[12][13]
In 2016, Dot Dot News was established in the same office as Wen Wei Po in Hing Wai Industrial Centre in Tin Wan.[14][15]
