The latest edition of Hong Kong’s official yearbook is missing a chapter on the city’s history which had been included since the handover in 1997.
Hong Kong 2022 – the latest edition of the annual yearbook published by the government – was released last Friday. Revisions were made to the structure of this year’s edition, with a section on the city’s history dropped.
The Information Services Department, which is responsible for the yearbook, said in a statement last Friday that the publication had “a new layout and structure,” and “provides readers with an overview of life in Hong Kong in the year 2022.”
“In 19 chapters, the yearbook covers the administration, legislature, legal system and economy, detailing the government policies, achievements and developments in the year,” the statement read.
The dropped section on the city’s history had been included in the annual yearbook since Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. It had also been part of an annual report published by the British colonial government since as early as the 1970s, according to Ming Pao.
The chapter dedicated to the city’s history in the Hong Kong 2021 yearbook recounted the city’s archaeological background, the colonial era, and socio-political changes preceding and following the Handover.
Besides the missing section on history, several stand-alone chapters were merged with others in the latest edition. Among them, “media and communications” was incorporated into the chapter on “home and youth affairs,” in which a section on the city’s mass media followed a part on the “dissemination of government information,” unlike in previous editions.
The 19 chapters in the current edition have mostly been renamed or restructured to match a governmental restructure last year.
The Information Services Department told HKFP on Wednesday that the changes were made to “provide a more focused review of the key developments in Hong Kong in 2022.”
The last time when the government made changes to the yearbook’s structure was in 2017, when a new chapter on “innovation and technology” was added. The yearbook had maintained a 22-chapter structure since then.
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