Hong Kong Civil Society News Archive is a grassroots, nonprofit platform dedicated to the public interest and education. We believe that understanding a changing society requires public records that people can continue to access, compare, and reconsider over time. Through news curation and archiving, we seek to preserve the experiences, voices, and evolving landscape of Hong Kong’s civil society as a shared resource for understanding the present, examining the past, and imagining the future.
Since 2023, we have been publishing monthly briefings in Chinese and English in the name of “Hong Kong Civil Society Updates”, covering government developments, court cases, and news across media, education, civil society, and arts and culture. Our website also maintains an index of more than 7,000 news reports, linking readers to versions preserved by the Internet Archive and other web archiving services. By bringing scattered reporting into an organized, contextualized collection, we help readers locate, review, and compare records preserved at different points in time. Our goal is to support civic education, research, and informed public discussion.
As Hong Kong’s information environment becomes increasingly restrictive, news reports and public information are at risk of deletion, revision, or disappearance when media outlets cease operations, websites close, or links stop working. When records become difficult to access, people’s ability to understand social change, trace events, and scrutinize public decisions is weakened. Our work seeks to reduce the risk of losing these records and to retain their sources, dates, and context wherever possible, so that future readers can examine the material and reach their own conclusions.
We value transparent sourcing, accurate curation, and room for different perspectives. We also encourage responsible use of the collection, with attention to privacy, copyright, and the potential effects of sharing or reusing information on individuals and communities.
We aim to serve researchers, students, journalists, and members of the public while encouraging them to develop their own bottom-up, community-driven archiving initiatives. These efforts can begin with an issue people care about, an experience they share, or a community history they want to preserve. Whether documenting local events, safeguarding an organization’s publications, or building a news index around a particular subject, initiatives of all sizes can contribute meaningful records to our shared memory. We want archiving to become a civic practice that more people have the knowledge and confidence to participate in.
Amid censorship, information manipulation, and surveillance, preserving records is one way to build civic resilience. Through sustained documentation, shared learning, and responsible access to information, we seek to help communities maintain their knowledge, connections, and ability to understand society on their own terms. Our mission is to keep Hong Kong’s public memory accessible as a shared resource that people can examine, discuss, and pass on to future generations.