The hk prize is one of the world’s premier high school contests rewarding academic achievement, extracurricular participation and leadership skills. It offers a significant monetary prize and opportunities to access Hong Kong’s premier research facilities to help students take their studies to new heights.
The awards are given by the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong, founded in 1954. They are considered the city’s answer to the Pulitzer Prizes, striving to recognise outstanding journalism and raise professional standards.
Xi Tianqi, who has only been at the Post for a year and a half, took second place in the Best Young Reporter category, which is open to all new reporters. She says winning the award reinforces her belief that writing has the power to influence people.
She also won a merit in the News Editorial Writing (English) category for her piece in December 2023 on a man’s untiring effort to help homeless people. Other news staff members won awards as well. Producer Matt Haldane and reporter Dylan Butts shared the first runner-up position in the Business News Writing (English) category for their feature from October 2023 on the hurdles to making Hong Kong a cryptocurrency hub. News editor (climate) Eric Ng won a merit in the same category for his feature in November 2023 on factors influencing the trading volume of Hong Kong’s first voluntary carbon credit market, Core Climate. Photographer Andy Chong Chun-pong’s shot of a surfer named Alessio at Big Waves took the first runner-up spot in the Photography category, while infographic designer Emilio Rivera won the coveted Judges Prize and HK$20,000 for his piece on the Chinese lunar calendar.
Prominent scholars around the globe have nominated five imprisoned Hong Kong pro-democracy activists for a Nobel Peace Prize this autumn. Their 79-day street occupation last summer and Beijing’s subsequent crackdown on dissent have been likened to the campaigns of Hitler critic Carl von Ossietzky, Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and Polish politician Lech Walesa. “A Peace Prize to Hong Kong prisoners of conscience would underscore the highest moral aspirations of humanity,” they wrote in a letter to the Nobel committee.
The other winners of this year’s hk prize were filmmaker Nick Cheuk Yik-him for his drama about family trauma and student suicide, Time Still Turns the Pages, and actor Michael Hui for his role as a migrant worker struggling to balance his work and family in the film. The lifetime achievement award went to veteran actor and director Benny Chan, who made some of Hong Kong’s most memorable cops-and-robbers films in the 1970s and 1980s. He won the same honour at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards in 2020 and at the Hong Kong Directors’ Guild Awards in 2021. The winner of the award for best new director was Tse Yin-yau, who directed a biopic about a renowned dancer’s struggle with depression. She had earlier won a leading actress prize at the Golden Horse Awards and a Hong Kong Directors’ Guild Award nomination.