Kevin Sinclair (journalist)

Kevin Maxwell Sinclair, MBE, (12 December 1942 – 23 December 2007) was a journalist, author and passionate supporter of Hong Kong. He spent more than 50 years reporting the news and over 40 of those in Hong Kong.

Early life

Sinclair was born in Thornton, Wellington, New Zealand, to 16-year-old Margaret Hocking of Cornish extraction and a mixed Polynesian father who left, never to return, when he was three. A decade later, his mother remarried, and Sinclair did not get along with his stepfather. It was with some relief that, upon completing high school, he left home to take up an opening as a labourer-cadet with the Forestry Service at the age of 16. At 14, he was deeply affected by John Snow's glowing account of the Chinese Communist Party, Red Star Over China, later rating it the book that most influenced his outlook.

Career in journalism

Sinclair started as a 16-year-old copy boy at the Wellington Evening Post before later working on the sensationalist New Zealand Truth and The Dominion for a year. Having left New Zealand in 1961, he lucked into his first job in Australia as the sole employee (and editor) of the south Queensland tourist-targeted rag, the Surfers Paradise Guide, and, by 1962, he was working as a reporter at Brisbane's The Telegraph. After covering the state parliament and crime-reporting for Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, he left to join The Star in Hong Kong, in 1968. He arrived on the SS Oronsay in the spring of that year. He moved to the Hong Kong Standard in 1970 and subsequently the South China Morning Post where he was news editor.

Even before the "Bamboo Curtain" opened up, Sinclair visited China, one of the first Western journalists to do so. He reported from many remote provinces where he became known as the famous "mad journalist with the hole in his throat", due to a 1978 tracheostomy that robbed him of his natural voice and left him with the trademark hole through which he learned to speak again.

Sinclair was the author of some 24 books. His first, No Cure, No Pay: Salvage in the South China Seas was published by SCMP Books in 1981 and his last, Tell Me A Story: Forty Years of Newspapering in Hong Kong and China, also by SCMP Books, was published shortly before his death.

Sinclair died at the age of 65 after a long battle with cancer. Four days before his death, he had attended a book signing at Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondents' Club - an event even attended by Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang, one of Sinclair's many friends. A celebration of his life was held at the Hong Kong Police Officers' Club on 7 January 2008 attended by 300 government officials, close friends and colleagues.

Honours

In 1983, Sinclair received an MBE from Queen Elizabeth for his contribution to the community through journalism. He was named "Person Of The Year" for 2007 in a poll run by the Government-owned radio station, RTHK.