Tsao is not without his controversies. His status as a premier writer of Hong Kong is often challenged, one example being a piece by Rosetta Lui and Perry Lam in the December 2007 issue of "Muse": "Some 15 or 20 years from now, the books of Chip Tsao... if they are talked about at all, will most probably be used as anecdotal evidence to illustrate how dumbed-down our city's culture has become since the 1997 return to Chinese sovereignty. His essays are always funny, sometimes lyrical but almost never ruminative."