Hong Kong is set to allow its public universities to double the number of non-local undergraduate admissions in the forthcoming Policy Address, local media reported citing government sources on Tuesday.

Sing Tao reported that the 2023 Policy Address – scheduled to be delivered by Chief Executive John Lee next Wednesday – will see the ceiling of non-local undergraduate intake be raised from 20 per cent of publicly-funded places to 40 per cent. The new proposal aims to make the city “an international higher educational hub,” the newspaper’s source said.

Under the current admission scheme, eight public universities in Hong Kong offer a total of 15,000 first-year degree places to local students. The proposal would allow universities to admit up to 6,000 non-local undergraduates.

HKFP has reached out to the Education Bureau for comment.

According to data from the University Grants Committee (UGC), an advisory body responsible for funding higher education institutions, Hong Kong had a total of 21,709 non-local student enrolments for the 2022-23 academic year. Among them, 74.8 per cent were from mainland China, and 21.6 per cent were from other parts of Asia.

The upcoming Policy Address will also encourage universities to step up efforts to recruit students from Belt and Road countries and from member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Sing Tao reported.

In June, the city’s education minister, Choi Yuk-lin, hinted that the limits would be raised: “Ensuring the quality of education and the proper use of taxpayer’s money, we will gradually lift the cap of non-local admissions to University Grants Committee funded programs.. to effectively address the need of Hong Kong’s talent development,” Choi said in Cantonese during a panel at the city’s legislature.

Lawmaker Chow Man-kong said the cap on the non-local student intake could be raised to 50 per cent, whilst local universities would have to make plans to accommodate the increase in students.

“There have been new academic buildings at different universities over the past five years, they [local universities] could handle a rise in numbers,” Chow, who is also the associate vice-president of the Education University of Hong Kong, said in Cantonese.

HKFP has also reached out to Chow for comment.

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Former Hong Kong district councillor Derek Chu has been arrested on suspicion of promoting pension fund plans without a valid intermediary license.

The police force told HKFP that the Sham Shui Po District’s crime unit arrested a 46-year-old man in Sha Tin on Tuesday on suspicion of breaching the Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) Schemes Ordinance.

“By court order, authorities conducted searches at the arrested person’s residence and office premises, seizing relevant documents and electronic communication devices,” a police spokesperson said.

The police added that the man was currently detained for investigation, and that further arrests were not ruled out.

Citing sources, local media outlet Ming Pao reported earlier on Tuesday morning that Chu was arrested on suspicion of promoting pension fund schemes without a valid license.

Other outlets including Sing Tao and government-owned broadcaster RTHK cited sources saying the force would carry out investigations in Kwun Tong, Mong Kok, and Tai Kok Tsui.

Local media outlets published photos of him entering a Kwun Tong office building with police officers at around noon on Tuesday.

In a reply to HKFP, the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority said people must register with the authority as an MPF intermediary before they can promote or sell pension fund schemes, and that it is a criminal offense to do so without a valid license.

A former district councillor Yau Tsim Mong district councillor, Chu was ousted from the District Council in September 2021 after his pledge of allegiance to the government was deemed invalid.

The former councillor distributed electronic candles on June 4 last year to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. He runs the online shopping platform AsOne, the proceeds of which are used to support jailed protesters.

Ahead of the crackdown anniversary this year, a private screening of a documentary organised by Chu was cancelled after police questioned him over his plans. The documentary, called To Be Continued, traces the history and culture of the State Theatre building in North Point, and its founder Harry Odell.

Plans to overhaul the District Council elections were unveiled in May 2023 to ensure only “patriots” are elected, following a pro-democracy landslide at the last polls in 2019. The number of seats chosen democratically by the public will be slashed to around 20 per cent, with the rest chosen by the city’s leader, government-appointed committees and officials.

Constituency boundaries will be redrawn and each local council will be chaired by a government official, similar to colonial-era arrangements. All candidates will undergo national security vetting to ensure patriotism.

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A Hong Kong court has handed a victory to the LGBTQ community by rejecting two appeals from the Housing Authority relating to the public housing rights of same-sex couples.

The Court of Appeal on Tuesday upheld two lower court decisions that the spousal policies of the city’s Public Rental Housing scheme and Home Ownership Scheme were unlawful and unconstitutional. The administrative measures breached the Basic Law provision that all Hong Kong residents shall be equal before the law, the court reaffirmed.

The appeals stemmed from two separate judicial reviews filed in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Nick Infinger launched his legal bid in 2018 after his application for public rental housing was declined by the government. The authorities had said his relationship with his partner, whom he married in Canada in 2018, fell outside the ordinary understanding of “husband” and “wife” as adopted by the Housing Authority.

Infinger argued that the policy was illegal and unconstitutional, as they constituted unjustified discrimination against him and his partner on the basis of sexual orientation.

See also: Explainer: LGBTQ rights in Hong Kong – breakthroughs and bitter court battles against discriminatory laws

The other judicial review was lodged in 2019 by Edgar Ng, who later took his own life in 2020. Ng had challenged the Housing Authority’s refusal to recognise same-sex spouses as “spouses,” or other “family members” of subsidised flat owners who married overseas.

Ng and his partner Henry Li had lived together in a public rental housing unit shortly after they got married in the UK in 2017. But their living situation was reported to the Housing Authority via anonymous letters that Li was residing in a flat leased by Ng, and Li failed to register as an authorised applicant of the public housing flat owing to the Housing Authority’s policy.

The pair subsequently decided to jointly purchase a flat under the Home Ownership Scheme. But the Housing Authority refused to allow Ng to make the purchase with Li as a same-sex spouse, nor did it consider Li as a family member of Ng.

The couple argued that the spousal policy was “unlawful and unconstitutional, and amounted to an “unjustified restriction” of their rights.

Summarising the respectively rulings by then-Court of First Instance judge Anderson Chow, who oversaw both judicial reviews, a three-judge appeal panel said on Tuesday that the court decided that married same-sex couples should be treated as equal to heterosexual couples in the provision of public or subsidised housing.

“Their need for affordable housing and a home to live together as a family and their wish to achieve home ownership on a joint basis are not intrinsically different. In the premises, there is differential treatment based on the prohibited ground of sexual orientation,” Justice of Appeal Thomas Au wrote on behalf of Chief Judge of the High Court Jeremy Poon and Justice of Appeal Aarif Barma in a 102-page English judgement handed down on Tuesday.

The Housing Authority argued that Chow failed to give “heavy weight” to the Basic Law provisions on religious freedom and personal freedom. The judge also failed to attach weight to the article stipulating that the Hong Kong government shall formulate policies on the development and improvement of the social welfare system based on economic conditions and social needs, it contested.

The government body also argued that the spousal policies in question only involved indirect discrimination. There was less need for the Housing Authority to justify why there was a differential treatment, it said.

By making this argument, the appeal panel said the Hospital Authority in effect admitted that its policy “specifically targeted same‑sex couples for ‘deterrence,’” as in to deter them from purchasing a HOS flat. Judge Chow was therefore “clearly correct” to adopt a higher standard in reviewing the two judicial reviews.

The appeal judges eventually rejected all grounds of appeal.

In a statement released through his lawyers, Li said he was “grateful” for Tuesday’s judgement, but it “reminded [him] painfully” that his husband and the original judicial review applicant was no longer around to witness the victory.

The couple simply wanted to be able to live together in their own home lawfully, a “humble wish” shared by many couples in the city, he said. But such wish was “cruelly denied” by the Housing Authority on the basis of sexual orientation, he said.

“It has been more than 4 years since this court case started. I sincerely hope that upon thoughtful consideration, the Housing Authority would not appeal and let this matter rest, and at last let Edgar rest in peace,” Li said in an English statement released by law firm Daly & Associates.

HKFP has reached out to the Housing Authority for comment.

Tuesday’s judgement reaffirmed the principles that public policies should protect all individuals from discrimination and unfair treatment based on their sexual orientation, Advocacy group HK Marriage Equality said in a Chinese statement issued on Tuesday.

The NGO called on the government to work with relevant stakeholders to design a comprehensive framework for recognising same-sex relationships.

“To avoid unnecessary and costly litigation, the government should not handle the recognition of same-sex relationships in a piecemeal manner,” it said.

In September, the city’s top court handed down handed a partial victory to LGBTQ advocate Jimmy Sham, ruling that the government has not fulfilled its constitutional duty to provide any legal framework for same-sex relationships to be recognised.

The government was given two years to develop a mechanism that recognises same-sex relationships before the court could say the government was in breach of the law.

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Hong Kong authorities plan to set up booths to promote the upcoming “patriots-only” District Council elections at markets under the city’s nightlife campaign, an official has said.

Erick Tsang, the Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, told lawmakers on Monday that the government was preparing a series of activities ahead of the District Council elections on December 10.

Among them is a “crossover” of the upcoming elections and “Night Vibes Hong Kong,” a campaign to boost the city’s consumption amid a weak economic outlook. As part of the campaign, which began last month, the government is holding weekend night markets with live music and vendors selling local food and handicrafts.

“We will have ‘district election night vibes,'” Tsang said, speaking in Cantonese at the constitutional affairs panel meeting. “We will set up booths [at the night markets] to have closer interactions with citizens, and explain to them the benefits of the revamped District Council and the new governance system.”

HKFP has reached out to the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau (CMAB) for details about when the booths would be set up and for how long.

Tsang’s comments came a day before the nomination period for the District Council elections opened.

Hong Kong will hold District Council elections in less than two months’ time, the first since the government announced an overhaul that ensures only “patriots” can run.

Under the new system, the number of seats chosen democratically by the public will be slashed to around 20 per cent, with the rest chosen by the city’s leader, government-appointed committees and officials.

Constituency boundaries will be redrawn and each local council will be chaired by a government official, similar to colonial-era arrangements. All candidates will undergo national security vetting to ensure patriotism.

During the last District Council elections in 2019, held amid the protests and unrest sparked by a controversial extradition bill, the pro-democracy camp saw a landslide victory.

More than half of those seats, however, have been vacant since 2021, when authorities mandated members to take an oath pledging allegiance to the Hong Kong government. Dozens were ousted after the government deemed their oaths invalid, while others resigned in protest.

Authorities said change was necessary after district councillors had “intentionally divided the society,” objected to the national security law and supported Hong Kong independence, without citing evidence for their accusations.

Not a ‘political’ event

According to Tsang, the promotion of the District Council elections began last month – earlier than usual – to “boost the electoral atmosphere in the city.”

Besides the crossover with the city’s nightlife campaign, the official said the government was also working on television specials to advertise the elections.

He also said the government would “go deep into the communities to hold over a hundred activities to directly interact with citizens through more light-hearted means,” such as family-friendly games.

Tsang added that the authorities had displayed 64 banners, including at cross-harbour tunnels, and that election advertisements were being broadcast on television 260 times per week.

Speaking to reporters after the panel meeting, Tsang denied that a crossover between the District Council elections and the nightlife campaign was political.

“I don’t think… the arrangement is a political event. We only wished to… mingle with citizens to let them better understand the benefits of the revamped system,” he told the press.

He added that the arrangement would not amount to competition with the vendors.

Asked if the government had an expected turnout rate, Tsang said such a rate does not determine whether the electoral overhaul was a “success.”

“Turnout rate is affected by various factors. For example, the weather on the voting day will affect citizen’s desire to vote,” he said.

Tsang said that the previously high turnout rate during the District Council elections in 2019 coincided with Hong Kong’s “most polarised and darkest” period, Ming Pao reported. That year, the District Council election saw a record 71.2 per cent turnout rate with around 2.94 million people casting their ballot.

Chief Executive John Lee also said on Monday that he had instructed different government departments to coordinate promotional efforts for the elections. Lee urged people who are “patriotic, competent, and wilful to serve their communities” to run in the race.

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Hong Kong authorities have confiscated batches of Japanese seafood that were suspected of being imported from areas near Fukushima, following an indefinite ban on aquatic products from parts of Japan two months ago.

The Centre for Food Safety (CFS) said in a statement on Monday that it discovered a pack of chilled scallops suspected to have been harvested and manufactured in Miyagi Prefecture, and two seaweed products suspected to have been processed in Tokyo and Ibaraki Prefecture, while inspecting Japanese imports.

The CFS, which is under the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, said it would continue to investigate and inform Japanese authorities of the suspected breaches.

“Prosecution will be instituted against the importers concerned should there be sufficient evidence,” a spokesperson for the CFS said in the English statement.

Hong Kong implemented an import ban on seafood from 10 Japanese prefectures in late August, after Japan began releasing treated wastewater from a nuclear plant in Fukushima that was damaged by an earthquake-triggered tsunami in 2011.

The restrictions, which bar all aquatic products “harvested, manufactured, processed, or packed” in Tokyo, Fukushima, Chiba, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Gunma, Miyagi, Niigata, Nagano, and Saitama, expanded on existing limitations introduced after the tsunami.

See also: Restaurateurs bite their tongues over Hong Kong’s curbs on Japanese seafood, as scholars say politics at play

Authorities now conduct radiation inspections on all Japanese seafood imports every day.

Tse Chin-wan, Secretary for Environment and Ecology, told lawmakers at a meeting last Tuesday that the city had invested nearly HK$10 million on the radiation checks thus far, including HK$6 million for radiation inspection equipment and HK$3.8 million on manpower.

Earlier this month, Tse also said that the city had no plans to lift the import bans in the immediate future.

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said in July that Japan’s move was in line with international standards, while the plant operator also said the radioactivity levels of samples were well within safe limits.

‘Satisfactory results’

Japan began its second phase of releasing the treated wastewater in early October, which will continue until next Monday.

As of Monday, CFS has tested the radiation level of 8,747 Japanese food import samples since August 24, when Japan began discharging the wastewater. All inspections have returned “satisfactory results.”

In the same period, the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department tested 2,606 samples from local fish culture zones and wholesale markets. All testing results were “satisfactory,” the department said.

The Hong Kong Observatory has also increased the frequency of monitoring water radiation levels since July 2023. As of Monday, no anomaly has been detected.

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Beijing, China

Chinese internet giant Baidu unveiled the newest version of its AI chatbot ERNIE on Tuesday, claiming it rivals the capabilities of OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT.

Baidu led Chinese tech firms in rolling out generative artificial intelligence apps, which are trained on vast amounts of data and interactions with users to answer questions, even complex ones, in human-like language.

Released to the public in August, ERNIE marked a major step for China’s tech sector, which is aiming to compete with the likes of Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI while staying within strict government controls.

Robin Li, Baidu’s founder and CEO, said during a presentation that ERNIE’s “comprehension, creation, logic, and memory… are in no way inferior to those of GPT-4”, referring to OpenAI’s latest model.

AFP was unable to independently verify the claim.

Li then grilled ERNIE with a series of puzzles, and asked it to write the outline for a martial arts novel.

The bot set to work, gradually creating new characters as the audience followed the composition in real time on a giant screen.

The latest version of ERNIE is currently open to select developers and not available to the public.

Chinese tech firms have ramped up investments in the technology after the success of ChatGPT sparked a global AI gold rush.

The internet is tightly controlled in China, however, and ahead of the rollout of domestic chatbots such as ERNIE, the government published guidelines on the development and use of generative AI.

Content generated by this tech must “reflect core socialist values and must not contain (elements relating to) the subversion of state power”, according to regulations.

These controls prevent ERNIE from answering any questions on subjects considered sensitive by Chinese authorities, such as the country’s leadership or its 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests.

When tested by AFP in August, ERNIE would ask to “change the topic” when queried on Tiananmen and Taiwan, the self-ruled island that China considers its territory.

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Hong Kong’s leader has instructed the Education Bureau to safeguard students’ education after a secondary school announced it is to close in 2026. Incumbent students had publicly pleaded with the government to intervene.

The Dominican Missions, which sponsors the operation of the Rosaryhill School, announced last month that the secondary school would close after the 2025-26 academic year, and new students would not be admitted from the following year. Senior students would be able to complete their studies, but junior students would be transferred to other schools after Form Three.

In a letter dated September, 15, the school’s supervisor, He Yousun – a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong – announced the news, citing declining student enrolment and changing government regulations.

Chief Executive John Lee told reporters on Monday that he has instructed the city’s education chief Choi Yuk-lin to “properly handle the matter.”

“This is not what the Education Bureau would wish for,” he said in Cantonese of the school closure. “[I] have given the Education Bureau several principles: One, to safeguard students’ education; Two, the sponsoring body should communicate with students and parents to find suitable solutions; Three, any measures should be conducted steadily; Four, the bureau should fully assist any affected students for transfer.”

Lee’s remarks came after a short-lived video was posted on the school’s public social media channels last week, in which dozens of Rosaryhill students in their uniforms openly pleaded to Lee and the Education Bureau to step in: “As president Xi said, ‘when there is a future for the youth, there is a future for Hong Kong,'” a student representative said in the video, referring to the speech made by Chinese leader Xi Jinping during his visit to the city last year.

“We hope the Chief Executive will be concerned about our future, and give us a chance,” he said in Cantonese.

They asked the authorities to pay attention to the 400-odd existing students and provide them with a new campus, “so that we can pursue our education in a familiar setting, under the guidance of our familiar teachers,” the student representative added.

But the video was soon removed. In a response written in Chinese on Monday, a spokesperson from the Education Bureau told HKFP that it was “deeply concerned” about the matter and urged the school’s sponsoring body to maintain close communication with stakeholders, and to pay attention to student needs.

The spokesperson said school campuses were distributed according to an established mechanism, with eligible sponsoring bodies invited to bid. Regarding the situation at Rosaryhill, the Education Bureau said it would assist parents and students with transfers.

School closure

Last month, Kentville Kindergarten, which called itself “one of the city’s highly respected and regarded private kindergartens,” announced it would close down in three years.

“All-time low birth rates” and the “emigration of young families” were among the challenges the school faced, according to a statement released last Friday.

There were 27,996 fewer students at the start of the last academic year compared to 2021, according to HKFP’s calculations in July based on the Education Bureau’s annual enrolment statistics report.

Chief Executive John Lee said in July that the decline in student enrolment was a “structural problem” linked to population flow. It was also a result of the city’s low birth rate, he said.

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Hong Kong Airlines launched a free flight ticket giveaway on Tuesday for destinations including Bangkok, Seoul, Nagoya, Okinawa, Osaka, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Sapporo, and Bali.

Flights must be booked through a dedicated webpage from 10 am.

Passengers must still pay for taxes, surcharges and other fees, though tickets include 20 kg of checked-in baggage.

The campaign is part of the Airport Authority Hong Kong’s “World of Winners” promotion.

In all, flights for half a million tourists and 80,000 residents are being offered to boost post-pandemic tourism.

Winners of earlier phases of the giveaway told HKFP that the taxes they were asked to pay were steeper than expected.

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By James Edgar with Qian Ye in Beijing, China

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in China on Tuesday to meet his “dear friend” Xi Jinping, bolstering their relationship at a summit that will be overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war.

China this week welcomes representatives of 130 countries for a forum of President Xi’s landmark project, the Belt and Road Initiative, that Beijing is using to extend its global influence.

Putin is at the top of the invitation list, with the Russian leader on his first trip to a major global power since the Ukraine invasion threw his regime into international isolation.

His plane landed in China just before 09:30 am, an AFP journalist on the tarmac saw.

He is due to meet Xi for talks on Wednesday, the Kremlin said.

“During the talks, special attention will be paid to international and regional issues,” it said, without elaborating.

He is on a mission to strengthen the already strong relationship with his communist neighbour, though Moscow is increasingly the junior partner.

Experts expect few big surprises during the Russian leader’s visit to China, seeing the meeting as more a symbolic gesture of support for Moscow.

“Russia is aware that China doesn’t want to sign any high publicity deals,” Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told AFP.

“China holds all of the cards,” he said.

The Kremlin said the two leaders would meet on Wednesday “on the sidelines” of the BRI forum.

And global headlines will be dominated by Israel’s war with Palestinian militant organisation Hamas.

Israel declared war on the Islamist group after waves of Hamas fighters broke through the heavily fortified border with Gaza on October 7, shooting, stabbing, and burning to death more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

More than one million people have fled their homes in scenes of chaos and despair under heavy Israeli bombardment of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Israel’s bombing has killed around 2,750 people in Gaza, mainly civilians, according to Palestinian authorities, and flattened entire neighbourhoods.

Western officials have criticised Beijing for not naming Hamas in statements on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke on Sunday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who called on China to use its “influence” in the Middle East to push for calm.

China has a warm relationship with Iran, where the clerical leadership supports both Hamas and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that could open a second front against Israel.

This year, China brokered an entente between former regional foes Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Beijing’s special envoy Zhai Jun will visit the Middle East this week to push for a ceasefire and peace talks, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said. No details have been given about where he will go.

‘Dear friends’ reunited

China and Russia’s top diplomats were singing from the same song sheet when they met in Beijing on Monday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov thanked China for inviting Putin as the summit’s “chief guest”, according to a readout from Moscow, which later said the top diplomat would head to North Korea after Beijing.

Putin and Xi will discuss the countries’ ties “in their entirety” when they meet this week, Lavrov told Wang.

Wang, in turn, said China “appreciates” Russia’s support for the Belt and Road Initiative.

“Both sides should plan commemorative activities, deepen strategic mutual trust, consolidate traditional friendship, and promote friendship from generation to generation,” he said.

The two nations share a symbiotic alliance, with China appreciating Russia’s role as a bulwark against the West and Moscow increasingly reliant on Beijing’s largesse in trade and geopolitical backing.

“Since Moscow embarked on its all-out invasion of Ukraine, it has been put in a position where it is unprecedentedly dependent on China,” Bjorn Alexander Duben of China’s Jilin University told AFP.

At the heart of the deepening partnership is the relationship between Xi and Putin, who have described each other as “dear friends”.

“President Xi Jinping calls me his friend, and I call him my friend, too,” Putin told Chinese state broadcaster CGTN ahead of his visit, according to a Kremlin readout.

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Hong Kong’s largest pro-Beijing party is set to field 122 candidates to stand in the upcoming “patriots-only” District Council election, as the party vowed to “enrich” the community and improve district administration in the city.

More than 100 individuals will enter December’s newly-restricted District Council election for the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), the party announced on Monday.

Among them, 44 candidates are set to stand in the geographical constituency that will be directly elected by the public. The remaining 78 candidates will vie for seats to be returned by three government-appointed bodies, which gained new powers to nominate District Council election candidates following an electoral overhaul passed in May.

The DAB’s new chairman and lawmaker Gary Chan, who took the reins of the party from ex-chairwoman Starry Lee last month, told the press that the upcoming race will “hold significant importance.” It will serve as a crucial step in realising the revamped electoral system and enhanced district governance in the city, he said.

See also: Democratic Party fields 6 candidates for ‘patriots-only’ district council race

“The new District Council election is an integral part of this democratic system. It aims to address the loopholes in the previous system, uphold the principle of ‘patriots administering Hong Kong,’ and effectively safeguard national security and social stability,” the party leader said in Cantonese.

The election scheduled for December 10 will be the first district-level race since Hong Kong amended the composition and method of formation of the government advisory body.

Plans to overhaul the District Council elections were unveiled in May 2023 to ensure only “patriots” are elected, following a pro-democracy landslide at the last polls in 2019. The number of seats chosen democratically by the public will be slashed to around 20 per cent, with the rest chosen by the city’s leader, government-appointed committees and officials.

Constituency boundaries will be redrawn and each local council will be chaired by a government official, similar to colonial-era arrangements. All candidates will undergo national security vetting to ensure patriotism.

In 2019, the DAB sent 181 candidates to stand in the race but suffered a major defeat to its pro-democracy rivals. However, the party is expected to face little competition from pro-democracy election hopefuls in December’s election, as one of the last remaining parties from that camp announced plans to only send a handful of candidates, amid speculations that they may not pass the national security vetting.

On Sunday, the Democratic Party announced it would field only six candidates to vie for seats on district bodies, fewer than the eight initially put forward. Party chair Lo Kin-hei, who is also poised to throw his hat into the ring, did not comment on the issue of securing nominations from the contentious three government-appointed committees.

When asked how many nominations the DAB secured from the three committees, Chan said it was the responsibility of the candidates to find their own nominations, instead of gaining them via the party: “As the management of the party, we would not seek nominations on behalf of the candidates… it is the chance for candidates to show their sincerity, this kind of thing must be done by the candidates themselves,” he said.

The DAB chief added that the party would also make nominations for candidates appointed by the chief executive, but the name list was not finalised yet. They would pick people with “good virtues,” including party members and those outside of the party, he said.

The nomination period for the District Council election will begin on Tuesday and end on October 30. Some DAB candidates are set to sign up for the election on Tuesday.

Most other traditional democrats remain behind bars, have quit politics, or are in self-exile following the onset of the 2020 security law.

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Hong Kong’s historic flea market, Temple Street, is to be “revitalised” into a market with food stalls and performances in November, a representative of the market’s hawkers has said.

Located in Yau Ma Tei, the market attracted hundreds of hawkers in the 1960s, becoming famous for cheap merchandise, street food, as well as stalls for fortune-telling. However, business has declined over recent years under the city’s strict Covid-19 restrictions. It has yet to recover since the pandemic rules were lifted early this year.

“We hope to develop it with reference to Taiwan’s Silin Night Market, ” Raymond Chan, a pro-establishment politician and chair of the Yau Ma Tei Temple Street Association of Hawkers, told RTHK on Monday in Cantonese.

Chan said that, while there used to be around 200 hawkers, currently only around 100 are actively running. He told HK01 in August that he had never seen the streets of Yau Ma Tei, Mong Kok and Tsim Sha Tsui so quiet.

To boost business around Temple Street, the association plans to set up 30 street food stalls for a night market: “12 stalls will be operated by existing restaurants on Temple Street, and the rest are from restaurants in nearby streets, ” Chan said.

Amid a weak growth outlook and a slower-than-hoped tourism recovery, the government launched a “Hong Kong Night Vibes” campaign to boost the night-time economy last month. The campaign involved a series of night markets along the city’s harbourfronts at Kennedy Town, Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui during holidays and weekends.

Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism of Hong Kong Kevin Yeung told TVB on Sunday that the area would be “revitalised” in November with street stalls and performances, but it should also take into account of the needs of residents as there were residential buildings surrounding the thoroughfare.

Chan said that the association hoped to host the night market until 11pm each night: “Our staff will patrol at 10pm everyday and ask tourists and diners to lower their voices as not to interfere with people living upstairs,” Chan said.

HKFP has reached out to the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau for more details.

Few tourists

However, Luk Hing Fat, another representative for hawkers, told Commercial Radio in September that he believed the plan would not help rejuvenate the tourist hotspot, as it is hard to attract many tourists by simply putting on street food stalls.

Luk, chair of the Temple Street Association of Commerce, said that the market declined because it did not renovate its business model and kept selling goods from mainland China. Another factor, he added, was the decreasing number of tourists: “There are few tourists from Europe and the US. Few visited [Temple Street].”

“Temple Street is a famous night-time attraction in Hong Kong,” a Hong Kong Tourism Board spokesperson told HKFP on Tuesday in an emailed response. “The Hong Kong Tourism Board is discussing with related trade associations and government departments to make plans to enhance the overall vibe of Temple Street. Details will be announced in due course.”

As one of the city’s pillar industries, the tourism sector has seen a slow recovery since the pandemic, with mainland Chinese arrivals picking up faster than international travellers.

In August, Hong Kong welcomed 4.07 million visitors, up 14 per cent from the previous month, according to provisional data from the Tourism Board. In August 2018, the city saw nearly 6 million visitors. Even during the height of the pro-democracy protests and unrest in August 2019, the city welcomed 3.59 million arrivals.

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Former Democratic Party lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting, along with six other co-defendants, pleaded not guilty on Monday to rioting during the Yuen Long mob attack in July 2019. Meanwhile, two news clips of protests in other parts of the city were admitted as evidence to reveal the “overall circumstances” at the time.

Lam was arrested in August 2020 and charged with with participating in a riot in Yuen Long on July 21, 2019. That night, dozens of rod-wielding men wearing white shirts – reportedly with triad connections – gathered in Yuen Long MTR station, attacking commuters and protesters.

Lam, who was among those assaulted, was accused of going to Yuen Long with the express purpose of provoking the white-clad men.

Wearing a suit jacket over a white shirt, he appeared before Judge Stanley Chan at the District Court on Monday morning alongside Yu Ka-ho, Jason Chan, Yip Kam-sing, Kwong Ho-lam, Wan Chung-ming, and Marco Yeung. All seven pleaded not guilty.

Standing in the dock, Lam said: “I did not participate in a riot, I plead not guilty,” to which Judge Chan replied that the case was a criminal proceeding, and that defendants did not need to say anything other than whether they pleaded guilty or not.

Lam has been remanded in custody since March 2021 over a separate national security case. The democrat, along with 46 other pro-democracy figures – including lawmakers and activists – stands accused of conspiring to commit subversion over his role in an unofficial primary election for the 2020 Legislative Council election, which was later postponed.

Relevance of HK Island protests

On Monday, the prosecution played two news broadcast clips of protests on the day of the Yuen Long attack to demonstrate the “broader environment” surrounding the rioting allegations.

Protests erupted in June 2019 over a since-axed extradition bill. They escalated into sometimes violent displays of dissent against police behaviour, amid calls for democracy and anger over Beijing’s encroachment. Demonstrators demanded an independent probe into police conduct, amnesty for those arrested and a halt to the characterisation of protests as “riots.” 

The prosecution claimed that the seven defendants had arrived in Yuen Long that night by MTR from Central, Causeway Bay, Wanchai, and Tsim Sha Tsui. Other districts including Admiralty and Sheung Wan also saw violent protests that evening.

Lam’s lawyer said she did not doubt the accuracy of the news reports, but called into question whether protests on Hong Kong Island were relevant to the case at hand.

She argued that protests in other parts of the city could not have had a direct effect on what happened in Yuen Long that night, and that the prejudicial effect brought about by the news clips would outweigh their evidential value, threatening the fairness of the trial.

She also said the prosecution was trying to “cast a wide net” by entering video clips irrelevant to its own submission, which only contained details about Yuen Long.

Judge Chan eventually admitted the two videos as evidence, saying that the court could not consider the Yuen Long incident in isolation from the protests that were happening across the city. He said the news clips were relevant to the case, and were an objective record of what had happened.

The hearing continues on Wednesday.

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One of Hong Kong’s last remaining opposition parties will field six candidates in the upcoming “patriots-only” district council election, fewer than the eight initially put forward.

It comes as its pro-Beijing rival is set to announce a list of more than 100 hopefuls on Monday evening for the newly-restricted December race.

The Democratic Party said on Sunday that the six will run for the directly-elected seats, including chairperson Lo Kin-hei, vice-chair Bonnie Ng, incumbent Yau Tsim Mong District Council member Leo Chu, and former district council members Li Shee-lin, Nelson Ip, and Ben Poon.

They will run for one of 88 democratically-elected seats on the local-level advisory bodies – down from 452 in the 2019 election. Democrats swept the last election, before a major electoral overhaul this year ensured only “patriots” could take part in the future.

The pro-democracy party had nominated eight members to join the overhauled race last month. Chairperson Lo Kin-hei said that party members were able to opt out from the race, despite the nomination, and that the party respected their decisions, local media reported.

Aside from Chu, the other candidates were all former district council members who resigned in 2021, after an oath-taking requirement had district councillors swear allegiance to the city and vow to uphold the Basic Law. It prompted a mass exodus of district councillors.

According to Yahoo News, when asked about his resignation following the oath-taking requirement, Lo said: “During every election, the declaration has certain clauses pertaining to uphold the Basic Law and plead allegiance to the HKSAR, I don’t think this has changed.”

Among the hopefuls, Lo and Ng will run in the Southern district and the Central and Western district, respectively, where both of them were elected in 2019.

Li Shee-linn and Ben Poon will eye seats in the Southern district and the Eastern district respectively.

Chu will seek re-election in Kowloon’s Yau Tsim Mong district, while Ip will return to the Kwun Tong district to run for his former seat.

Lo also said that he had obtained the full names and addresses of members of the three district-level committees from the Electoral Affairs Commission. The six hopefuls will seek nominations from them via post.

Under the new system, the “three committees” – the District Fight Crime Committees, District Fire Safety Committees and Area Committees – are responsible for gatekeeping the upcoming race. Candidates must bag nine nominations from the three committees in order to run.

Speaking to HKFP on Monday, Ng said they will try to reach committee members previously unknown to them.

Environmental activist and ADPL hopefuls

Also seeking to enter the race is environmental activist and local media outlet Transit Jam journalist, James Ockenden. In a Monday press release, the Kowloon Tong resident said he would stand in the Kowloon City North district to win “safe streets, safe jobs, clean air and a fair deal for residents.”

“In the poorer districts, developers plot to give residents a poor deal and wreck heritage while developers in the rich districts pay little concern to the environmental health and safety of residents,” he said.

He also said that he hopes to improve the walkability and transport connections of the Kai Tak site.

Ockenden added that he has “found possible contact details for just 40 of the 155 nominators” in the Kowloon City committees: “While I respect government concerns over candidate abilities, we also need to allow flexibility for newcomers and those who have worked outside of the established systems.”

Another remaining pro-democracy party, the Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood, also said two party members – Chow Kai-lim and Kwok Wai-shing – will join the race, Ming Pao reported.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, the largest pro-Beijing political party in the city, is set to announce a list of more than 100 hopefuls for the upcoming race on Monday afternoon.

Electoral overhaul

Plans to overhaul the District Council elections were unveiled in May 2023 to ensure only “patriots” are elected, following a pro-democracy landslide at the last polls in 2019. The number of seats chosen democratically by the public will be slashed to around 20 per cent, with the rest chosen by the city’s leader, government-appointed committees and officials.

Constituency boundaries will be redrawn and each local council will be chaired by a government official, similar to colonial-era arrangements. All candidates will undergo national security vetting to ensure patriotism.

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Hong Kong customs seized around HK$12 million of suspected cocaine weighing about 11 kilograms from a 51-year-old male air passenger on Sunday.

The man had entered from the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten via Paris, France, with the suspected drugs concealed in his wheelchair.

“Customs officers found the batch of suspected cocaine concealed inside the interlinings of the cushions and the back of his check-in electric wheelchair. The man was subsequently arrested,” a Customs and Excise press release said on Sunday.

Those found to have trafficked dangerous drugs into Hong Kong face a maximum penalty of life in prison and a HK$5 million fine.

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By Oliver Hotham in Beijing, China

China began welcoming on Monday representatives of 130 countries for a conference that will be overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war, as an increasingly assertive Beijing is asked to help de-escalate the violence.

At the top of the invitation list to China’s Belt and Road Initiative forum is Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, on his first trip to a major global power since the Ukraine invasion threw his regime into international isolation.

Leaders have begun to pour into the Chinese capital for a gala event marking a decade of the BRI, a key project of President Xi Jinping to extend China’s global reach.

While China hopes the forum will help boost its international standing, Israel’s war with Palestinian militant organisation Hamas will continue to dominate the headlines.

Israel declared war on the Islamist group after waves of its fighters broke through the heavily fortified border on October 7, shooting, stabbing, and burning to death more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

More than one million people have fled their homes in scenes of chaos and despair under heavy Israeli bombardment of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Israel’s bombing has killed at least 2,670 people in Gaza, mainly civilians, and flattened entire neighbourhoods.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi condemned Israel’s actions for going “beyond the scope of self-defence” and called for it to “cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza”.

“(Israel) should listen earnestly to the calls of the international community… and cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza,” Wang said Sunday, in China’s strongest response to the conflict so far.

Western officials have criticised Beijing for not naming Hamas in statements on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Wang spoke on Sunday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who called on China to use its “influence” in the Middle East to push for calm.

China has a warm relationship with Iran, where the clerical leadership supports both Hamas and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that could open a second front against Israel.

This year, China brokered an entente between former regional foes Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Beijing’s special envoy Zhai Jun will visit the Middle East this week to push for a ceasefire and peace talks, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said on Sunday, without specifying which countries he would visit.

The BRI summit would allow Beijing to frame attendance as a gesture of support for its position on the Israel-Hamas war, said Niva Yau, a non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

“Any head of state that attends the summit, it’s almost as if they agree with Beijing’s positions on these global issues,” she said.

Strategic dependence

Several leaders are already in Beijing ahead of the two-day forum, which starts Tuesday.

Among them are the prime ministers of Hungary, Ethiopia and Cambodia, and the presidents of Kenya, Chile and Indonesia.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov flew into Beijing on Monday and within hours held talks with his Chinese counterpart.

Lavrov thanked China for inviting Putin as the summit’s “chief guest”, according to a readout from Moscow, which later said the top diplomat would head to North Korea after Beijing.

Relations between China and Russia are “on the rise”, Lavrov told Wang Yi, adding that their two leaders “will discuss them in their entirety when they meet”.

Wang, in turn, said China “appreciates” Russia’s support for the Belt and Road Initiative.

The top Chinese diplomat also discussed the Israel-Hamas conflict, with Wang stressing Beijing “condemns all acts that harm civilians and opposes any violation of international law”.

“It is necessary for the UN Security Council to take action, and major countries should play an active role,” he added.

Putin is expected to arrive overnight.

Trade between China and Russia this year has soared to levels not seen since the beginning of Moscow’s war in Ukraine, with Chinese imports of Russian oil offering Moscow a critical lifeline as international sanctions bite.

China has refused to condemn the Ukraine war in an effort to position itself as a neutral party, while offering Moscow vital diplomatic and financial support.

Xi and Putin, who have described each other as “dear friends”, each rely on the other to help counter Western dominance.

Putin hailed ties with Beijing in an interview with state broadcaster CGTN ahead of his visit, praising Xi’s “highly relevant and significant” initiatives.

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Hong Kong’s anti-graft watchdog has arrested 20 people on suspicion of withdrawing money out of their government pension funds using forged paperwork, sparking controversy among Hongkongers now residing in the UK.

According to a statement issued by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on Friday, some 10 Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) scheme members and one insurance agent were among the 20 individuals arrested by the commission operation.

The arrestees, who have been released on bail, allegedly presented documents falsely indicating they would be leaving Hong Kong to reside in mainland China.

MPF scheme members can ordinarily only withdraw contributions when they reach the age of 65. According to the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority, scheme members who can demonstrate that they have left the city permanently can withdraw their money early.

Hong Kong has seen a mass emigration wave in the wake of Beijing imposing a national security law and strict Covid-19 rules even as they were abandoned around the world.

Among the top destinations is the UK, which launched a British National (Overseas) visa immigration route in July 2020. Under the scheme, BNO passport holders and their dependents can apply for permanent residency after living in the UK for five years. After one more year, they can apply for British citizenship.

MPF authorities said in 2021 after Hong Kong stopped recognising the BN(O) passport that scheme members “cannot rely on BN(O) passport or its associated visa as evidence in support of an application for early withdrawal of MPF.”

While the ICAC did not say those arrested had settled in the UK, local media cited sources saying that some Hong Kong migrants who had moved to Britain made an early MPF withdrawal by claiming they were relocating to mainland China, and that they could otherwise not get their money.

The insurance agent, which the ICAC said “masterminded” the operation, had allegedly accepted bribe payments ranging from several thousand dollars to several ten thousand dollars from each applicant in exchange for applying to withdraw their pension funds early using false documents.

“Such applications involved the use of false documents including statutory declarations and proofs of employment or residence in the Mainland,” the anti-graft watchdog’s statement read.

Investigation ongoing

The commission’s statement came after overseas outlet The Chaser reported on Friday that UK-based BN(O) passport holders had withdrawn their MPF money in Britain through an agent from insurance company Sun Life Financial, after making a sworn declaration with a lawyer’s help that they would permanently leave Hong Kong.

The agent then prepared documents indicating that they would be relocating to mainland China or other cities in order to withdraw their pension funds.

In the Friday statement, the ICAC said an investigation was ongoing, and that it would seek advice from the Department of Justice to decide whether to prosecute the arrestees.

According to government data, residents who permanently left Hong Kong withdrew HK$1.79 billion from their MPF accounts in the second quarter of 2023 — a 15.5 percent drop year on year.

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Beijing, China

China supports the “just cause of the Palestinian people in safeguarding their national rights”, foreign minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart on Sunday as Beijing takes an increasingly clear stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Israeli forces have staged thousands of air raids in the Gaza Strip in recent days, claiming more than 2,300 lives in the densely populated territory after Hamas fighters broke through the heavily fortified border with Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,300 people.

China, which has close ties with Iran, has increasingly positioned itself as a mediator in the Middle East, but has been criticised by Western officials for not specifically naming Hamas in its condemnations of violence in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

“The root cause… of the Palestine-Israel situation is that the Palestinian people’s right to statehood has been set aside for a long time,” Wang said in a call with Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Sunday, according to an official Chinese readout.

“This historical injustice should end as soon as possible,” Wang said, adding that “China will continue to stand on the side of peace and support the just cause of the Palestinian people in safeguarding their national rights.”

More than one million people in the northern part of the crowded enclave of Gaza have been ordered to flee ahead of an expected major ground offensive by Israel, an exodus that aid groups said would cause a humanitarian disaster.

The cramped and impoverished Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million residents live on top of each other, has been under a land, air and sea blockade by Israel since 2006.

Most of those killed on both sides are civilians.

Wang said in a call on Sunday with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Faisal bin Farhan that Israel’s actions were now “beyond the scope of self-defence” and the Israeli government must “cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza”.

“(Israel) should listen earnestly to the calls of the international community and the UN secretary general, and cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza,” Wang added in a change from Beijing’s earlier ambiguous statements on the conflict.

Wang told Prince Faisal that “all parties should not take any action to escalate the situation and should return to the negotiating table as soon as possible”.

On Saturday, Wang held a call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who had called on China to use its influence in the Middle East to push for calm in the region.

Wang urged “the convening of an international peace meeting as soon as possible to promote the reaching of broad consensus”, according to Beijing’s readout of the conversation.

Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a senior research fellow at the Asia Centre in Paris, said Beijing was “more influential (in the Middle East) than ten years or twenty years ago mainly because of its economic footprint there but also its diplomatic activism”.

But “its good relations with Israel, especially in the technological sector, limits Beijing’s room for manoeuvre”, he told AFP.

Chinese envoy visit

China’s official statements on the conflict have not specifically named Hamas in their condemnations of violence, leading to criticism from some Western officials who said they were too weak.

The country’s state broadcaster CCTV said on Sunday that China’s special envoy Zhai Jun will visit the Middle East next week to push for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict and promote peace talks.

Zhai “will visit the Middle East next week to coordinate with various parties for a ceasefire, to protect civilians, ease the situation, and promote peace talks”, CCTV said in a video posted to its official social media account on Sunday.

Zhai said in an interview with CCTV that “the prospect of further broadening and outward spillover (of the conflict) is deeply worrying”, according to the broadcaster.

Zhai met Friday with the Arab League’s representatives in China and said Beijing supported the regional group “in playing an important role on the Palestine issue”, according to a foreign ministry statement.

He told the bloc that Beijing would “make unremitting efforts to get the Middle East peace process back on track”, the statement added.

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Hong Kong, long plagued by sky-high property prices, was judged the world’s least affordable housing market for the 13th consecutive year this March. Yet a Yau Tong site which could accommodate thousands of homes has been lying idle for almost three decades.

Big developers and the government have repeatedly failed to agree on a land premium which landowners must pay before construction. With the developers currently hit by a 14-year high in interest rates and a property market slump, some experts say the site should be partially rezoned for public, rather than private, housing.

One developer has managed to sell all of its units on a small portion of the Yau Tong waterfront, but only after price cuts to levels last seen seven years ago.

Flats at Coast Line II were sold in August at an average of 15 per cent below the market rate -prices equivalent to the cost of a government-subsidised apartment. The cheapest flat was a studio apartment measuring 210 square feet, offered for HK$2.9 million, or HK$13,810 per sq ft – an 18 per cent reduction on the market rate.

The private homes, which have yet to be completed, are among the first of a proposed 12,000 flats scheduled to be built under a large-scale development project just a short walk downhill from Yau Tong’s mainly working-class neighbourhood.

Most of the seaview site spanning just under 14 hectares – made up of Yau Tong Bay and an adjacent industrial area – has been left idle for close to three decades. With the city’s housing market in a rut, it seems the wait will last even longer.

30 years idle

The Coast Line properties have been developed by CK Asset, the flagship developer of Hong Kong’s richest man – Li Ka-shing – and are part of a proposed large-scale private development project in the Yau Tong Industrial Area. It was once known as the “the ulcer of Victoria Harbour” for its heavy pollution before the government eventually rezoned it for residential and comprehensive development in 1998.

The adjacent Yau Tong Bay was originally part of the industrial estate and populated with shipyards and sawmills in the 1950s. The U-shaped plot, created by reclamation, was rezoned for comprehensive development in 1993 when the colonial government was still in power.

To Chan Kim-ching of development policy think-tank Liber Research Community, the Yau Tong “privatopia” illustrates the problem with private land development in Hong Kong.

For years, real estate oligarchs have been accused of hoarding existing land resources in the city. Developers are currently sitting on more than 1,000 hectares of agricultural land alone – not to mention urban land resources such as the Yau Tong plot. No taxes are imposed on land hoarding in Hong Kong.

Echoing Beijing’s characterisation of Hong Kong’s housing crisis as a “deep-rooted problem,” the Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office (HKMAO) Xia Baolong has said he hoped the city would eradicate its infamous subdivided flats and cage homes by 2049.

“This reflects another side of Hong Kong’s land problem,” Chan said. “People always say there’s no land in Hong Kong, but the Yau Tong plot has been left idle for 20, 30 years.”

Land premiums

By the time construction for the Coast Line flats finishes in late 2025, less than a tenth of the 12,000 flats will be complete. Chan said private developers’ unwillingness to pay hefty land premiums was to blame.

In an interview with HKFP, the researcher said developers had repeatedly rejected land premium offers set by the Lands Department.

Henderson Land Development’s executive director Augustine Wong told reporters last month that the consortium in charge of the Yau Tong Bay project – consisting of Henderson, Sun Hung Kai Properties, New World Development, Hang Lung Properties, China State Construction, and Wheelock Properties – had refused to accept the latest deal.

The HK$24.5 billion premium was calculated at an average of HK$6,000 per square foot for the project’s 4.01 million square feet of buildable gross floor area.

Chan said the developers were appealing to the government to reduce the figure because the property market was falling faster than the premium. The consortium had previously turned down another offer in March 2021, also citing exorbitant costs.

The head of the Real Estate Developers Association (REDA) Stewart Leung has said in an interview with the Hong Kong Economic Journal that “there has never been a redevelopment so repetitive” and that the developers in the consortium each had their own interests to consider.

Norey Tsang, an assistant associate director at Midland Realty, said developers did not have hopes of making a big profit at Yau Tong and wanted merely to reduce the premium by around 20-30 per cent, to a level commensurate with the prices of the finished flats.

New World Development’s net gearing ratio – a metric of how much of a developer’s operations are funded by debt – stands at 46.9 per cent, while Henderson’s was 24 per cent, according to their latest interim financial reports. And with interest rates at a 14-year high, developers are wary, Tsang told HKFP in a phone interview.

“There’s no pressing need for them to take that [land premium] price,” he said. “They can afford to slow down the pace of development.”

Louis Loong, lawmaker for the real estate sector who is also secretary general of the developers association, declined to speak with HKFP, with his assistant saying he had no comment on matters regarding the Yau Tong development.

Gov’t intervention and market forces

The decades-long wait should have been enough to dispel the commonly-held belief that private developers are more efficient than the government, said Chan of Liber Research, arguing that the government’s “blind faith” in market forces had significant implications for future private development initiatives.

That would include development projects on proposed artificial islands to be created east of Lantau and envisaged as the city’s third business district, after Central on Hong Kong island and Kai Tak in Kowloon. Kai Tak was hit the hardest when Midland Realty recorded a cumulative 20,513 unsold flats in August.

That figure has been on the rise for months, with Centaline Property reporting 19,085 unsold flats as of the second quarter of 2023.

Chan said the idle Yau Tong plot could have been put to better use as a site for transitional housing for residents waiting for a public housing flat, or for flats under the Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) – the government’s subsidised-sale housing programme.

Flats under the scheme are considered public housing, as are subsidised flats built by private developers introduced under a new pilot scheme that the government says could help kickstart development on existing land.

In 2018, the government set a 10-year target to bring the proportion of public housing up to 70 per cent, with the remaining 30 per cent for private housing. That has become a holdover policy goal for Chief Executive John Lee’s administration.

Chan said zoning half of Yau Tong Bay as HOS flats would create a “sense of urgency” and speed up private development. “They [developers] will realise that they might lose their hold on the development project if the delays persist,” Chan said. “Why can’t the government take the lead and do what this city needs the most, which is to build public housing or subsidised flats?”

But rezoning the land at the Yau Tong waterfront would “change the rules of the game,” said Cody Chow, another researcher at Liber. “It would only be a last resort for the government.” A land hoarding tax, he added, would similarly be out of the question.

Ng Mee-kam, director of Urban Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the government could take a more proactive role in better utilising land resources, if it chose to do so. “They can rezone the land. They can ask [the Urban Renewal Authority] to work on it, and they can initiate a public-private partnership,” she told HKFP.

Yau Tong West district councillor Lui Tung-hai, meanwhile, said the Yau Tong Bay project had been stuck in the pipeline for too long. “Drawing out the development doesn’t do any favours for residents,” he said.

Lui said residents and the council were both largely supportive of the development plan, but also hoped that there would be height and density limitations in place to ensure that the sea view was still visible to other residents.

While he supported the government’s push for more public housing, Lui had no hopes for government flats on the the harbourfront site. “Most of Kwun Tong district is public housing anyway,” he said.

Other than proposed major developments off Lantau and in the New Territories, site rezoning was listed as one of the methods for increasing housing supply in Lee’s maiden policy address last year. He also cited New Development Areas, brownfield and factory estate development, and major infrastructure projects.

In a reply to HKFP, the Development Bureau said zoning the Yau Tong sites for private development would “maximise development potential” to meet development needs.

“While the Government may not have control over the pace of these market-led redevelopment projects and the original use at these sites continues to exist before redevelopment, we consider this as a necessary process of urban renewal to replace old with new,” a spokesperson for the bureau said.

Homes or investments?

Midland’s Tsang, however, said building government flats at Yau Tong Bay would only cause the investment value of the area to fall, and negatively impact developers’ enthusiasm. He compared Liber’s suggestion to the situation at Kai Tak, where home prices plunged after private residents voiced concerns about a short-term public housing initiative that would block their sea views.

Even the current zoning plan could jeopardise property values. The Planning Department acknowledges that “interface problems” may arise while Yau Tong Bay is transformed into a residential area.

Chow said the area’s “Residential (Group E)” zoning bans “new industrial developments” but allows existing industrial buildings to remain until they are replaced by high-rise apartment complexes. This would make for “incompatible” land use over the course of Yau Tong Bay’s gradual transformation into a private housing enclave.

Right next to the Coast Line II complex, just several feet away from the lower floors, are two concrete batching plants that remain operational even though operator China Concrete Company faces 26 prosecutions from the Environmental Protection Department (EPD).

The operator has been refused licence renewals for both plants on several occasions since April 2021 for failing to limit air pollution, and the High Court this January rejected a legal bid to challenge the government’s decision. Just last month, the city’s Ombudsman found that the EPD had properly fulfilled its duties “from an administrative perspective.”

Ailing property market

Suggestions that stamp duty may be cut, a decade after it was increased to curb a property market bubble at the time, have fuelled speculation that home sales and prices could rebound.

As of October 11, after finance minister Paul Chan hinted last month that the measures would be scaled back, Henderson shares had surged 5.8 per cent to HK$21, Sun Hung Kai had risen 7.4 per cent to HK$85.25, and New World 3.9 per cent to HK$15.06. Yet it could be years before developers feel the tangible effects of relaxing what were once dubbed the “spicy measures.”

Meanwhile, disappointing land sales indicate that developers are still cautious. Only two of the 18 plots earmarked for sale in the current fiscal year have been sold so far, raising HK$10 billion in premiums.

Originally, the government hoped to raise HK$85 billion via the programme by the end of the fiscal year in March 2024, which would equate to some 13 per cent of its total expected revenue. It also hoped to rake in the same amount from stamp duties.

For the government, which faces an overall deficit potentially larger than the HK$54.4 billion it had originally forecast earlier this year, land sales are a significant source of revenue for funding infrastructure projects.

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By Amber Wang in Taoyuan, Taiwan

Dressed in a robe fringed with beaded tassels, traditional Taiwanese opera singer Jen Chieh-li applies the final touches to her heavily painted face as she prepares to take the stage.

The 34-year-old is a member of Jing Sheng Opera, one of a handful of troupes in Taiwan still staging traditional dramas in the Hakka language — a dialect that is not widely spoken on the island because of its dwindling ethnic population.

Taiwan’s traditional Hakka opera, usually performed at religious festivals, dates back to the late Qing Dynasty and was brought to the island by migrants from mainland China.

Even as its popularity dwindles, Jen, who has trained at a drama school since the age of 12, said she would not give up the fading art.

“I could find a regular job but it would be a waste of all the time and effort I have devoted to studying and performing Hakka opera,” she told AFP.

That sweltering night in northern Taoyuan county, Jen was performing “Legend of the White Snake”, a famous Chinese folk tale about a romance between a man and a serpent spirit.

Around 100 people, mostly elderly, sat on plastic stools to watch the show on a makeshift stage outside a temple in a reflection of Hakka opera’s struggle to capture the attention of a shrinking audience.

“It is a niche performance art as many people don’t even understand the language,” said Chiang Yu-ling, who founded the Jing Sheng Opera with her husband 19 years ago.

There are only eight Hakka troupes in Taiwan that can keep regular staff, albeit with financial support from the government and private sponsors, according to Chiang.

She is counting on new blood, such as Jen, who is studying for a master’s degree in performance art, to help bring in more and younger audiences.

“My husband and I are in our 50s and we have limited ideas. We hope to get more young people on board… to make Hakka opera more different,” Chiang told AFP.

People are nostalgic

Hakka shares similarities with Peking opera, the most dominant form of traditional Chinese opera that has UNESCO heritage recognition, but language is one of the main reasons for its flagging popularity.

In Taiwan, where Mandarin is widely spoken, Hakka people make up less than 20 percent of its 23 million population, and even those within the community are no longer fluent in the dialect.

“My father’s generation speak mostly Mandarin already and I speak very little Hakka,” said Louis Lo, 30, who was accompanying his elderly relatives to the show.

“The opera doesn’t appeal to young people due to the language barrier,” he told AFP.

To attract more fans, Jing Sheng’s troupe has incorporated modern elements into traditional performances.

One example is their update of a Chinese folk drama involving a dragon princess and her human lover, which now includes street dance sequences, fire acts and acrobatics.

“We are getting the audiences to know Hakka opera through more innovative performances and hopefully they would also want to watch the traditional ones,” Jen said.

Despite their dwindling audience numbers, fellow performer Shih Yu-tsen, 31, said the art form “definitely won’t vanish”.

“There may be fewer Hakka operas but people are nostalgic,” she told AFP.

“They will recall the past all of a sudden and they will want to watch it.”

Besides, Jen said, a show ticket costs as little as $200 Taiwan dollars (US$6.30) with student discounts.

“We often say it just takes the same amount of money to buy a Starbucks to support traditional art, to keep it alive,” she said.

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Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Saturday on China, a partner of Iran, to use its influence to push for calm in the Middle East.

The top US diplomat, who was visiting Saudi Arabia, had a “productive” one-hour telephone call with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

“Our message was that he thinks it’s in our shared interest to stop the conflict from spreading.” Miller told reporters on Blinken’s plane from Riyadh to Abu Dhabi.

“He thought it could be useful if China could use its influence.”

China has a warm relationship with Iran, whose clerical leadership supports both Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group ruling Gaza that carried out grisly attacks inside Israel a week ago, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that could open a second front against Israel.

Wang for his part said that the United States should “play a constructive and responsible role, pushing the issue back on track for a political settlement as soon as possible,” according to a readout published by the Chinese foreign ministry.

“When dealing with international hot-spot issues, major countries must adhere to objectivity and fairness, maintain calmness and restraint, and take the lead in abiding by international law,” said Wang.

The Chinese foreign minister added that Beijing called for “the convening of an international peace meeting as soon as possible to promote the reaching of broad consensus”.

“The fundamental outlet for the Palestinian issue lies in implementing a ‘two-state solution’,” said Wang.

China’s official statements on the conflict have not specifically named Hamas in their condemnations of violence, leading to criticism from some Western officials who said they were too weak.

The United States considers China to be its main global challenger but the two powers have been working to stabilise their relationship, with Blinken paying a rare visit to Beijing in June.

Miller said the Middle East was an example of areas where the two powers could work together.

The phone call also included a discussion on China-US relations, which have been heavily strained in recent years by a range of thorny trade and geopolitical issues.

But Wang suggested there were some positive signs.

“China and the United States have recently carried out a series of high-level contacts, and bilateral relations appear to have stopped sliding and to stabilise,” said Wang.

“(This) has been welcomed by the people of the two countries and the international community.”

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By Rod Parkes

Back in colonial days, the accepted wisdom was that Hong Kong did not produce world-class sportspeople. While this belief was a little unfair to those who brought home occasional medals from the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games in disciplines as diverse as lawn bowls, taekwondo and ten-pin bowling, these were isolated successes and the territory lacked strength in depth.

Apart from football (older fans will remember the glory days of Derek Currie), sport was largely an amateur affair. Parents typically discouraged their children from pursuing a sporting career, steering them instead to choices perceived as more lucrative, such as medicine and law.

This picture began to change with Lee Lai-shan’s first Olympic medal for the territory in 1996. Then after Hong Kong’s return to China, the SAR gained one further medal at each of the 2004 and 2012 games – but it was the breakthrough performance at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (held in 2021) that was a real game-changer. Having never won more than one medal at any previous Olympiad, the territory came away with six, including one gold.

This remarkable success story for the SAR was followed by an even more impressive performance at the just concluded 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou (held in 2023), which yielded a record 53 medals, as well as breaking several local and Asian records. These results have been widely acclaimed, but critics are already questioning whether this level of achievement can be sustained. So how does Hong Kong really stack up against the competition?

In the official results table, which is traditionally ranked in order of gold medals won, Hong Kong stood in 49^th place out of the 206 competing territories, 93 of which won medals, in Tokyo. In Hangzhou, it finished 12^th out of 45 – both creditable top quartile finishes. But there are other ways of looking at the results.

For a start, the focus on gold medals can give an unjust impression of total performance. In Tokyo, Ukraine earned a commendable 19 medals overall, making it 16^th by total medal count, but, with just one gold, only 44^th in the official medals table – not too far above the three territories which earned a solitary gold but no other medals: Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Morocco in 63^rd place. In Hangzhou, Kazakhstan ranked 5^th in total medals, but only 10^th in golds. By this measure, Hong Kong’s ranking improved from 49^th to 40^th in Tokyo, and 12^th to 10^th in Hangzhou.

As expected, the medals table is invariably dominated by the most populous countries: the USA in Tokyo, and China at both events, with Japan (host nation in 2021) coming in behind them. South Korea was the next ranked Asian country, while India atoned for its lacklustre Olympic showing with a respectable performance in Hangzhou, where the Games featured more of the sports in which it excels, such as cricket which gave it two golds. And Uzbekistan emerged as a new sporting powerhouse, coming in just behind the leaders with a strong 5^th or 6^th place finish in golds and total medals respectively across a range of sports.

Compared with these giants, Hong Kong is a minnow. They have the advantage of much larger populations to pick from – China alone has 188 times as many people as the SAR. Adjust the results to take account of population, however, and things look startlingly different, with several “little big winners” coming into play. The diminutive republic of San Marino, with fewer than 35,000 inhabitants, topped the table in Tokyo, with its tiny team of five entrants winning three medals – a feat even more remarkable considering the enclave had never previously won a medal. Two small island territories, Bermuda (population 65,000) and Grenada (113,000) took the next two places. On this metric, Hong Kong ranked significantly higher at 30^th, while China dropped to 77^th and the USA to 60^th.

On a per capita basis in Hangzhou, Bahrain would have raced to victory, with 10 of its 12 golds coming in athletics. Second-placed Macau – which did not even compete in Tokyo – captured six medals, all in Wushu. Hong Kong came in third, with its 53 medals spanning a more diverse range of events across almost all the 40 disciplines featured. Hong Kong’s traditional strengths in swimming, cycling, fencing – spearheaded by Edgar Cheung Ka-long – and rugby sevens were on full display, but successes also came in less expected disciplines like rowing, equestrianism, golf, triathlon, squash, and even bridge.

Of course, not all small territories did well – Bhutan, usually expert in archery, was off the mark this time, joining two other minuscule countries and war-torn Yemen which also struck out. Not that a large population is any guarantee of sporting success – the world’s second (now first) most populous nation, India, sat at the foot of the table on a medals per capita basis in Tokyo, with fourth most populous Indonesia only two places above it at 91^st.

Nor is a large team an advantage in absolute terms, but as a percentage of population it appears to help – several countries with a sizable squad relative to their populations, including San Marino, Grenada and New Zealand, did well in Tokyo on a per capita basis. Macau’s per capita success in Hangzhou may owe something to the fact that one Macau citizen in every 3,709 was in its team. Hong Kong and Bahrain also ranked high on this metric, with one in 10,898 and 11,028 respectively. At the opposite end of the scale, only one in every three million Syrians and one in two million Indians was in their country’s delegations.

Beyond population, cultural differences play a part in success – sports-mad countries like Australia and New Zealand regularly punch above their weight. Conversely, in some places, religious and cultural factors limit the development of sporting potential, particularly among women. Afghanistan’s Taliban regime halves the country’s chances by fielding only men, and while Saudi Arabia has plenty of sand, don’t expect to see a Saudi women’s beach volleyball team in bikinis any time soon! This is not a concern in Hong Kong, with four women among its five medal winners in Tokyo – ever-improving swimmer Siobhan Haughey won two, making up the total of six, and topped this with six medals in Hangzhou.

A country’s sporting culture also helps determine the sports in which it can compete successfully. Where a country’s national sport is not on the Games roster, this tends to handicap its chances. Some sports come and go from the Games; and Grace Lau’s wins for Hong Kong in karate at both Tokyo and Hangzhou will not be repeated in Paris 2024, when the sport will not be featured. Indeed, some countries’ national sports, such as camel racing in the UAE, or the rough-and-tumble variant of polo played with a goat carcass in Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan, are unlikely ever to feature at an Olympiad. With no specific national sport, Hong Kong’s effort was spread across 14 different sports in Tokyo and more than 30 in Hangzhou.

How successful were Hong Kong’s athletes individually? One more way of looking at the results is the proportion of each country’s athletes who succeed in winning a medal. In Tokyo, San Marino (0.6 medals per athlete) and Bermuda (0.5) were clear winners, with at least half their teams of five and two respectively taking a medal home. Hong Kong gained 0.143 medals per athlete, placing it equal with three other countries in 21^st place. In Hangzhou, China achieved the remarkable feat for a large country of winning more than 0.432 medals per team member, while Hong Kong was in mid-table at 0.077.

Efforts have been made to analyse Olympic results by the Gross Domestic Product of competing territories, but correlation is difficult because of varying income equality and the differing natural advantages enjoyed by some countries. Nevertheless, a country’s relative wealth certainly has an impact on its sporting success. Football is the most popular game in the world because all it requires is a ball, a patch of waste ground, and some improvised goal markers. Basketball is another favourite in poorer countries, with only a ball and two hoops needed.

By contrast, other sports require considerably more expensive equipment, such as boats and sailboards, horses, or other facilities. Countries prosperous enough to afford plentiful public swimming pools, tennis courts and golf courses have a head start in developing sporting talent. It is unlikely that Sarah Lee would have become the first local competitor to win medals in two different Olympiads – London 2012 and (nail-bitingly late) in Tokyo if Hong Kong had not invested in a velodrome. And much of the SAR’s success in recent years has been shepherded by the Hong Kong Sports Institute, founded as the Jubilee Sports Centre in 1982. Many of Hong Kong’s champions have emerged from the Institute, which provides training and financial support to promising young athletes in selected sports.

Meanwhile poverty-stricken Bangladesh is the most populous nation never to have won an Olympic medal. It won only two in Hangzhou, despite its massive 170 million population. In 2008, Bangladesh’s Olympic Association head Wali Ullah attributed the country’s poor results to its weak economy and widespread corruption. Pakistan, with three medals – one per 83 million of its population – fared only slightly better. At the other end of the scale, Macau brought home a remarkable one medal per 79,000 people.

From whatever perspective one views it, Hong Kong’s sporting performance has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent decades, yielding excellent results in Tokyo and Hangzhou. Questions about the scale and allocation of government subsidisation are certainly legitimate – some well-funded athletes were left trailing in Hangzhou – but ultimately, winning depends on the talent and determination of the contestants. As Hong Kong’s sporting heroes inspire a new generation of dedicated youngsters to take up sport, future success will surely follow.

Rod Parkes has lived and worked in Hong Kong since 1975. His “portfolio career” has spanned IT, HR, quality management, teaching, brand strategy, and three decades of writing and editing for clients ranging from start-ups to major multinationals, with occasional forays into journalism on the side. He loves Hong Kong, for all its faults.

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In the heart of Cheung Chau, a cultural park bearing the name of Cheung Chau Cinema has opened to the public. But the movie theatre itself – a Grade III historic building dating back to 1931 and one of Hong Kong’s two remaining pre-war cinemas – remains fenced off.

Since its closure in 1997, the 555-seat cinema has been largely abandoned and left to decay, but will be transformed into a restaurant while retaining its original structure, according to the developer.

Passers-by peeped curiously into the recently opened park when an HKFP reporter visited the dumbbell-shaped island southwest of central Hong Kong in mid-September, but were hesitant to enter. Some said they had not been consulted about the privately-run restoration project while others welcomed the plan, hoping it would bring back some life – and tourists – to the venue that existed only in their childhood memories.

“[The Cheung Chau Cinema] illustrates why it’s important to focus on conservation but not preservation,” conservationist Fredo Cheung told HKFP in Cantonese. “Its abandonment was due to its failure to meet the needs of the community. By introducing a new purpose, it can serve the community again… while being retained as much as possible.”

HKFP talked to Cheung Chau residents and experts to understand the challenges facing such cultural heritage projects and their connection to the collective memory of the community.

26 years of decay

“The last film I watched [at the Cheung Chau Cinema] was Stephen Chow’s Hail the Judge,” Kong, an island resident for over 40 years, told HKFP in Cantonese. Hail the Judge was a 1994 comedy starring Stephen Chow and directed by Wong Jing.

Throughout its six decades in operation, the Cheung Chau Cinema was one of the island’s few entertainment venues. “There were only two cinemas on Cheung Chau back then, and the other one closed even earlier… [so] many people liked to watch films here,” Cheung, an indigenous resident, said in Cantonese.

According to Hong Kong Memories, a digital archive that documents the city’s history and culture, Cheung Chau Cinema’s only rival, the Golden Dragon Theatre, brought down the curtain in the 1980s, and the site was used for a residential complex.

“I loved to go there as a kid… [the Cheung Chau Cinema] would screen Wuxia films starring Walter Tso and Yam Kim-fai, and I would trail behind the adults to sneak inside, standing in the aisle to watch,” said local resident Cheung, now aged 76.

Tso and Yam were both household names and Chinese opera film icons in the mid-20th century.

After the cinema closed down, the building was neglected for years; projectors and theatre seats became tarnished as nature gradually reclaimed the site. Kong, who ran a photo studio opposite the cinema in the 1990s, said residents were unclear about its future back then.

“Its roof collapsed! Roots grew into the walls and windows were broken,” Kong said. “I personally would like it to have been developed sooner.”

A decade of revitalisation plans

Things began to change after the government classified the cinema as a Grade III historic building in 2011.

Under Hong Kong’s three-level grading system, Grade I is the highest, meaning the structure could potentially become a declared monument protected by the law, Fredo Cheung, chief director of the Conservancy Association Centre for Heritage, told HKFP.

“But being Grade III doesn’t mean it’s less valuable, and the Cheung Chau Cinema has great historical and social value,” he said.

The difficulty in conserving Grade III historic buildings lies in the fact that many were private properties, and often the owners could not afford to conserve them, Fredo Cheung said. Demolition and redevelopment would almost certainly yield greater commercial value.

“From the perspective of a private property owner, having [the cinema] left idle for so long is like burning money,” Wendy Ng, president of the Hong Kong Institute of Architectural Conservationists (HKICON), told HKFP in Cantonese.

Local media reported in 2012 that an application to build an 11-condominium complex at the site was withdrawn. Plans to develop a shopping mall were also retracted.

In 2015, the now defunct pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily reported that the former cinema may be transformed into a restaurant while minimising alterations to its structure.

According to Cheung Chau Culture Company, which is managing the revitalisation, historical artefacts dating back 5,000 years were unearthed during the restoration process. This discovery led to a three-year exploration, further delaying redevelopment.

In August, when the company opened the first phase of the revitalisation plan – an information centre, a piazza, and a studio offering activities such as film screenings and concerts – CEO Eric Chiang told media that the whole project had cost an undisclosed nine-digit sum.

As for the actual cinema building, which remains inaccessible, its main block will be turned into a “Chinese-themed restaurant.” It is expected to launch in 2025, according to the company’s plan.

‘Manage change, not prevent change’

When asked how he felt about the revitalisation plan, Kong said he welcomed a new restaurant in the neighbourhood. “I could hang out with my friends, and it’s one more option for the tourists,” he said, his wife nodding beside him.

But asked whether residents would like the cinema to retain its original function, Kong – and other locals who spoke with HKFP – said they had no say in the project.

“For private heritage owners, the top priority is inevitably to sustain its properties,” Ng of HKICON said. “If it remained a cinema, would enough moviegoers visit? The fact that it closed in the first place implies the opposite. If changing its function could sustain the historic building, it is already meaningful from a conservationist point of view.”

Ng added that the government could increase assistance to private heritage owners, including streamlining the application process for funding schemes.

“Heritage is not just about the building itself,” Fredo Cheung said, “and Hong Kong is still using a rudimentary approach to heritage conservation that sometimes overlooks the contextual values of a building in its community.”

He said he hoped that the “most important features” of the Cheung Chau Cinema would be conserved, but said there should be some leeway for it to adapt to new uses.

“We should manage change, not prevent change.”

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Hong Kong on Friday added two major shark families to a list of endangered animals whose trade in the city will be tightly controlled under CITES regulations.

The city is one of the world’s largest markets for shark fin, which is viewed by many Chinese communities as a delicacy and often served as a soup at expensive banquets.

Its trade is regulated under an international treaty on endangered species that requires export permits proving it was sustainably captured.

CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) — the treaty’s governing body — approved in November a plan to include the requiem shark and the hammerhead shark families on their list, which includes more than 50 species.

Hong Kong amended its list of endangered species “to give effect to the latest regulations of CITES on the controlled species”, a spokesman for the city’s agriculture, fisheries and conservation department said on Friday.

The new protected species list includes the two shark families, as well as various types of turtles and stingrays, according to the statement.

Domestic consumption has shrunk after years of activist campaigning, but Hong Kong remains a vital trade hub for shark fins — both legal and illegal — headed for the Chinese mainland and Southeast Asia.

Marine experts in Hong Kong say the majority of shark fins consumed in the city are blue sharks — which are part of the requiem family.

“Before the two families were covered, around 20 percent of the shark fins imported to Hong Kong were under control. But now with the two families, up to 90 percent would come under control,” Stan Shea, marine programme director for the BLOOM Association, told AFP.

He added that effective regulation would depend on the government training up frontline officers on the visual inspection and DNA examination of the fins, in order to identify the protected species.

Marine biologists estimate that more than 100 million sharks are killed each year, pushing vital apex predators towards extinction and ocean ecosystems to the brink of collapse.

Those killed for their fins have the appendage sliced from their bodies before being thrown back into the sea, where they suffer a slow death.

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Washington, United States

A narrow majority of Americans would support committing US troops to defend Taiwan if China were to invade, a survey said Wednesday.

The study by the Eurasia Group Foundation found that 42 percent of Americans would “somewhat support intervention” to support Taiwan and another 18 percent would “strongly” back intervention.

President Joe Biden has publicly said he would back sending US forces to defend Taiwan, a self-governing democracy and major technology hub which Beijing claims and has not ruled out seizing by force.

The official US position on intervention is one of ambiguity, with the United States — which only recognizes Beijing — focusing on providing weapons to Taiwan for its own self-defense.

Mark Hannah, a senior fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation, said that support for intervention in Taiwan could be linked in part to the negative image in the United States of China, which has faced wide criticism on issues from trade to human rights.

“China is perceived as a bad actor and there could be a rally-around-the-flag effect if they invaded an island that is democratic and has been a long-term partner of the United States,” he said.

The survey took responses from 1,000 US adults from August 28 to September 6.

It found broad support for Taiwan but Republicans were most likely to back intervention strongly.

Support was flipped on Ukraine with backers of President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party most enthusiastic about the robust US support for Ukraine, which has been criticized by Republican former president Donald Trump.

But in one area that did not entirely mirror political statements, a bipartisan majority of 77 percent said they supported diplomacy with Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The question did not specifically mention a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran which was negotiated by Barack Obama and trashed by Trump.

A full 67 percent of Americans also said they backed direct negotiations with US adversaries “even if they are human rights abusers, dictators or home to terrorist organizations.”

The survey was taken before a bloody weekend assault on Israel by Islamist movement Hamas, which has support from Iran’s clerical leaders.

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Michael Brock was a sympathetic and thoughtful teacher who guided me through 19th century English politics. I always tried to follow his example when I became a teacher myself.

But the most important thing he taught me was not about English politics but about university politics. We were discussing some obviously fatuous decision of the University Senate, and I expressed bewilderment that so many people who in their academic work were dispassionate and logical, could be so prejudiced and irrational when running the university in which they worked.

This was an error, Mr Brock said in his gentle way. The fact that people could think dispassionately and logically in their work did not mean they would think dispassionately and logically about anything else.

We had stumbled across what is now a commonplace of psychology: mental habits are, as they now put it, domain-dependent. Habits and processes from one area will not necessarily influence others.

So we find that there are university professors who believe in fairies, cold-eyed financial analysts who carry lucky rabbits’ feet, and so on. This problem afflicts even the most eminent scientists. Linus Pauling is a good example. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry, and the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in global politics. He spent much of the later part of his life campaigning, in defiance of any serious evidence, for the idea that massive doses of vitamin C could cure the common cold, and cancer.

Mention of the Nobel Prize brings us to the local example which brought this matter into my head. I have been following, from a safe distance, the small scandal which has arisen at Hong Kong University, where a whistleblower, or possibly whistleblowers, have alleged that the President and Vice Chancellor has been violating some bureaucratic rules on the spending of money.

I know no more of this than we can read in the newspapers and nothing in this item should be interpreted as implying any opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the P and VC, Zhang Xiang.

As often happens on these occasions some interesting snippets emerged into the light of day. One of the matters in dispute concerns a project to refurbish the private dining rooms reserved for senior staff. There are three of them. Am I alone in thinking three is perhaps a bit excessive?

Anyway the P and VC deployed lawyers and a private PR company, the University Council set up a small committee to look into the matter, and into this bubbling brew stepped Professor Fraser Stoddart, alias Sir James Fraser Stoddart, a global authority on the structure of molecules, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2016 and a freshly minted Chair Professor at HKU.

Apart from musings on international academic culture which I shall not visit, Prof Stoddart made two points in an open letter. The first one concerned one of the whistleblown complaints: that President Zhang had hired a headhunting company to look for a new vice president and medical dean, without going through the usual tendering process.

“I think organisations often have small windows to attract top talent and if they follow the rules and use Google Search they may lose the desired individuals,” the prof was reported as saying. “Speed is of the essence. It has to happen literally in hours. It has to happen in hours. Not days, not weeks, not months. It has to happen in hours and things are not at HKU.”

University administrators all over Hong Kong then had to pick themselves off the floor on which they had been rolling while laughing. This is just not the way these things are done in Hong Kong and it probably shouldn’t be. The appointment of a vice president usually takes up to a year involving what is called a “global search.”

It must be said that the results of the global search are often disappointing. Since there is an unofficial expectation that the successful candidate will have a Chinese name and already be doing a similar job elsewhere, the list of serious candidates often comes down to a few people who are already vice presidents or similar in US universities, or even a Hong Kong one.

Still, administrative cultures vary; it is not uncommon for people used to the way things are done in other places to find Hong Kong procedures frustrating. I happily plead guilty to occasional bursts of barely suppressed rage. But it is the way things are done here.

I suspect the underlying problem here may be that Profs Zhang and Stoddart are used to the way things are done in America. Hong Kong organisations generally – not just the universities – tend to have elaborate procedures, often adopted on the advice of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), intended to banish any whiff of nepotism, favouritism or corruption. This is an objective to which most Hong Kong people subscribe with enthusiasm. I hope the rules were followed. If they were not, the council is quite right to take the matter seriously.

Prof Stoddart’s other point was about whistleblowing. He said the complaints should be ignored because “Anonymous letters and emails are not worth listening to, much of which are probably fabricated.”

This is not good enough. Of course people who wish to complain about the P and VC of their university are going to do so anonymously. Hong Kong’s protections for whistleblowers are very sketchy and in any local institution presidential enthusiasm for frank public discussion of alleged errors is limited.

If complaints cannot be made anonymously and investigated properly on that basis they will not be made at all. The police and ICAC accept anonymous complaints for similar reasons. University councils should do the same.

I see Prof Stoddart was only appointed by HKU on September 3 of this year. A bit early, perhaps, to be participating in this sort of affair?

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A group living at Hong Kong’s only private low-rental housing estate has staged a protest against a relocation plan for elderly residents ahead of a five-year redevelopment period. Residents are expected to leave by early next year.

Residents Kwok Kei-kyun and Kate Auyeung – member of the Resident’s Rights Concern Group of Tai Hang Sai Estate – marched on Friday from the estate in Skep Kip Mei to the Legal Aid Department Kowloon Branch Office in Mong Kok, as they sought legal advice to potentially take their case to court.

Kwok carried a handmade coffin and hoisted a banner made of foam boards that read: “awaiting grievance to be heard” and “where to seek justice?” in Chinese. The duo shouted slogans, including “no proper relocation [when] bringing down our house; losing home when we are old” around the busy streets of Mong Kok.

According to the redevelopment plan, the landlord of the decades-old estate – the Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation (HKSHCL) – will offer rent subsidies and relocation assistance to households eligible to move back after the site is redeveloped. It is expected to be completed in 2029, with residents expected to leave by next March.

Auyeung, a 60-year-old who had lived on the estate for four decades, said the relocation plan is “unfair and improper” for many elderly residents: “It’s difficult for elderly residents to rent a place elsewhere, landlords are unlikely to lease to elderly people,” she told HKFP in Cantonese.

According to the HKSHCL’s proposal, for those who are deemed eligible to return, a single-person household will get HK$540,000 in rent subsidies and another HK$30,000 for relocation. This amounts to HK$9,000 of monthly rent subsidies during the five-year redevelopment period.

A family of four, on the other hand, will receive HK$810,000 in rent subsidies – the equivalent of HK$13,500 a month.

But Auyeung said that many residents are old and may not secure a lease elsewhere given this amount of subsidies.

Kwok, 64, said it is unfair that the redevelopment project will offer fewer, and smaller, units to returning residents than new buyers: “It’s like robbing the poor to provide for the rich,” he said in Cantonese.

The HKSHCL plan states that it will provide – at most – 1,300 units for eligible tenants to return, and around 2,000 units for a “Starter Homes” pilot scheme. The policy was introduced in 2017 by then-chief executive Carrie Lam to provide discounted private housing to first-time buyers.

HKFP has reached out to HKSHCL for comment.

Local support

The protest received support from some local residents on Friday.

Lai, a 91-year-old resident who lives alone at Man On House, said he felt anxious and helpless over the relocation plan.

Meanwhile, 33-year-old Mok Hon-yu – a life-long resident at the estate – told HKFP that he supported the group’s demands, as the HKSHCL had not provided enough guarantees to tenants that the project could be completed in five years.

The pair demanded that the HKSHCL directly communicate with them, as they urged the government to help elderly residents to secure a lease, or provide them with a transitionary public housing unit in nearby districts.

In August, more than 100 residents of Tai Hang Sai Estate already held a press conference expressing dismay and saying that their relocation had not been properly handled.

Wong Yu-wa, one of the residents’ representatives, said at the press conference that 80 per cent of the residents were more than 70 years of age.

The government had the responsibility to help relocate the residents for its role in facilitating the redevelopment project, Wong added.

Built in 1965, the estate was the only private low-renting housing in Hong Kong. It was created to rehouse tenants affected by the clearance of the then-Tai Hang Sai Resettlement Area.

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A mainland Chinese postgraduate student has been deported from Hong Kong after completing a six-month prison term over a sedition charge related to plans to display a Tiananmen banner.

Twenty-three year old law student Zeng Yuxuan had been in remand since this June over a separate sedition charge for allegedly mourning the death of Leung Kin-fai, who stabbed a police officer on July 1, 2021 before taking his own life.

Zeng’s full name was mentioned in the Security Bureau’s statement on Thursday, which read that she was “removed from Hong Kong” in accordance with the Immigration Ordinance. The bureau cited a clause in the ordinance stating that removal orders may be made against “an undesirable immigrant who has not been ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for 3 years or more.”

Her initial sedition charge was withdrawn, and Zeng was instead convicted in September after pleading guilty to attempting to do an act with a seditious intention by planning to display a large banner relating to a 1989 Tiananmen monument on the anniversary of the crackdown.

Pillar of Shame

The banner display was part of an international campaign led by Jens Galschiøt, the Danish artist who created the the Pillar of Shame – an eight-metre sculpture commemorating the victims who died in the 1989 crackdown.

The sculpture was quietly removed by the University of Hong Kong citing safety concerns in December 2021. It had stood on the campus for 24 years before the removal.

In May, it was seized by the city’s national security police as evidence for an incitement to subversion case involving the organiser of Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen crackdown vigil and its three leading members Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, and Chow Hang-tung.

The court heard that Zeng had done “meticulous planning” to showcase the banner as she had brought tools, conducted site checks, and booked a nearby hotel room. She also informed the press about the plan to raise publicity and came up with contingency plans in case she botched the plan.

Sedition is not covered by the Beijing-imposed national security law, which targets secession, subversion, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts and mandates up to life imprisonment. Those convicted under the sedition law – last amended in the 1970s when Hong Kong was still a British colony – face a maximum penalty of two years in prison.

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A Hong Kong man who displayed a British colonial flag during a FIFA World Cup qualification match was taken aside by police.

Around 15 minutes before the match, a man wearing a hat and a white shirt held up Hong Kong’s colonial-era flag in the Hong Kong Stadium’s spectator stand. He was soon approached by at least two plainclothes police officers and led away, Yahoo News reported.

Police then searched the man’s bag, according to photos by online media outlet The Collective.

In response to HKFP, the police said in a statement that they identified a 21-year-old man who “displayed a flag” when police were maintaining order at the stadium.

“Our staff therefore approached the man for further investigation. No one was arrested in the incident,” a police spokesperson told HKFP in Cantonese.

Police did not reply as to why the man was taken away and whether he returned to the spectator stand afterwards.

The colonial flag, emblazoned with the Union Jack and a dragon and lion motif, was adopted by the colonial government as Hong Kong’s flag from 1959 to 1997 before the city was returned to China.

The flag was waved occasionally at assemblies and marches during the 2019 protests and unrest. During the July 1 storming of the Legislative Council building in 2019, some protestors hung the flag on the podium after breaking into the building.

Tam Yiu-chung, a pro-Beijing politician who is a former member of the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress, told media outlets in May 2020 – ahead of the national security law’s enactment – that he believed waving the colonial flag during marches would violate the legislation.

In November last year, a citizen journalist who waved the colonial flag while the Chinese national anthem was being played was sentenced to three-months’ jail for insulting the anthem. The incident, during which people were gathered at a mall to watch an Olympics medal ceremony, marked the first conviction under the National Anthem Ordinance which came into effect in 2020.

National anthem booed

Hong Kong matches have sometimes become platforms for political demonstrations in recent years.

Hong Kong football fans were heard booing China’s national anthem in September last year at Hong Kong Stadium, when the city saw its first match that was open to spectators after the government lifted Covid-19 restrictions.

A team of six policemen patrolled the stadium, with one holding up a video camera recording the scene as some fans booed “March of the Volunteers” for about 10 seconds before the Hong Kong team took on Myanmar, AFP reported.

During two Asian qualifiers for the World Cup in November 2019, when Hong Kong played against Bahrain and Cambodia, spectators also booed the national anthem. FIFA later fined the Hong Kong Football Association 30,000 Swiss francs (HK$30,500).

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Nascent political party New Prospect for Hong Kong has announced plans to send five candidates to run in the upcoming District Council election. The party, founded amid the 2019 extradition bill unrest, said it would seek the support of young voters and vowed to “mend the rift” in the city.

Led by the party’s sole lawmaker Gary Zhang, New Prospect announced on Thursday that it would send five candidates – all with no prior election experience – to run in the geographical constituencies in four districts in December’s general election. They were Yanki Chan, Sharon So, Koby Wong, Billy Li Ka-chun and Henry Ma.

The candidates’ diverse background and their passion, together with their experience serving the community, would allow them to secure enough nominations and voter support, the lawmaker said. 

Ma, one of the election hopefuls who had engaged in district work in Hung Hom for almost two decades, said the candidates were not completely inexperienced.

“We have zero experience in running in elections, but we have served the communities for a certain period of time. We could combine our expertise and our experience in the districts and find a new direction,” Ma said in Cantonese.

He is currently a member of the Fight Crime Committee, a local government-appointed body which gained new powers to nominate District Council election candidates following the overhaul.

The election will be the first since Hong Kong unveiled plans in May 2023 to overhaul the District Council elections to ensure only “patriots” are elected, following a pro-democracy landslide at the last polls in 2019. The number of seats chosen democratically by the public will be slashed to around 20 per cent, with the rest chosen by the city’s leader, government-appointed committees and officials.

Constituency boundaries will be redrawn and each local council will be chaired by a government official, similar to colonial-era arrangements. All candidates will undergo national security vetting to ensure patriotism.

Zhang, an executive committee member of New Prospect, told reporters on Thursday that the most critical issue Hong Kong had to tackle was trust among citizens, as well as their trust in the establishment. 

The party aimed to propose concrete solutions rather than simply airing criticism or making a show of taking a stance, he said, adding the party – established in October 2019 – demonstrated to young people that it “stood behind them,” even on more controversial issues. 

“It’s our job to repair the relationship and also to show our young people and society as a whole that it doesn’t have to be like what it used to be in the past,” the legislator said.

Zhang had advocated for Hongkongers whose mainland travel permit was revoked or confiscated after they were arrested or charged in connection with the 2019 protests. He had handled 200 to 300 cases, the legislator said on Thursday, saying he was confident that trust could be rebuilt.

The party’s electioneering activities would be coordinated by former Civic Party district councillor William Li, who was elected in 2019 with 6,450 votes, the highest in the Kwun Tong district. He resigned in July 2021 amid an exodus of pro-democracy councillors ahead of a new oath-taking arrangement for public officers. He also quit the Civic Party, which voted to disband in May this year citing vacancies in its executive committee posts.

He told the press on Thursday that many people were left feeling “lost and helpless” after “many things happened in Hong Kong” in recent years. But as a young man who loved the city dearly, he believed Hong Kong’s society “should not look like this.” 

“We want to do something for Hong Kong, to mend the rift that is not visible and let Hong Kong shine again. To mend the rift, we must rebuild trust. Trust is the basis for society to operate, a catalyst for productivity and the momentum to drive innovation and prosperity,” he said in Cantonese. 

Li was asked multiple times why he did not enter this year’s race. He told the press that he would concentrate on managing the election campaign for New Prospect and asked reporters to focus on the five candidates. Whether it would be difficult for him to secure nominations from the three committees was “irrelevant,” he said.

Zhang revealed on Thursday that the party’s election funding was set at HK$500,000, and an internal fundraising campaign held earlier had surpassed the amount.

The nomination period of the District Council election will begin next Tuesday and end on October 30.

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Hong Kong’s medical sector lawmaker has said it was “unrealistic” to expect a new medical school to address the manpower crunch in the short term, after the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) proposed establishing the city’s third medical school.

Lawmaker David Lam spoke about HKUST’s plan to open a medical school on an RTHK radio show on Friday.

“Relying on this medical school to solve Hong Kong’s shortage of doctors in the short term is unrealistic. Maybe it might in the long term,” Lam said in Cantonese.

HKUST president Nancy Ip told lawmakers at a meeting on Wednesday that the university intended to establish a medical school in Hong Kong. It would be the city’s third medical school, after the University of Hong Kong and Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Lam said HKUST had yet to present a plan on collaborating with teaching hospitals, where medical students would train.

Hong Kong has long faced a shortage of doctors at public hospitals, an issue exacerbated by an emigration wave amid Beijing’s national security law and strict restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Hospital Authority said in late June that the attrition rates of doctors and nurses in the year 2022/23 were 7.1 per cent and 10.9 per cent respectively. Allied health staff, a term referring to health professionals such as occupational therapists, clinical psychologists and dieticians, also saw a high attrition rate of 8.4 per cent.

According to lawmaker Edward Leung Hei, who also attended the meeting, HKUST plans to admit 50 medical students when the “first phase” commences in two to three years. The university hopes to gradually increase its yearly intake to 200 students, he said.

‘Urgent’ demand

In a reply to HKFP, a HKUST spokesperson cited an “urgent” demand for medical services in Hong Kong amid an aging population. The spokesperson added that health technology and biomedical sciences were among key research topics at the university.

Hong Kong has undertaken measures in recent years to tackle the manpower shortage in the medical sector, including relaxing rules for admitting overseas doctors to work in public hospitals. Authorities have also held job fairs in Australia and the UK to attract graduates to work in the city in the past months.

The Hospital Authority said in August that 100 overseas doctors would join the Hospital Authority following its recruitment efforts to address the “urgent situation.”

Among the 100 doctors recruited, around two-thirds were from the UK while the remaining were from countries such as Australia. The first batch of ten doctors started working in Hong Kong in September.

The HKUST’s proposal was backed by other lawmakers as well as the city’s education minister.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Secretary for Education Christine Choi said she supported the plan, citing a growing demand for healthcare services as well as Hong Kong’s “developmental needs” under China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, which is Beijing’s national blueprint outlining key policies and goals.

Leung, the lawmaker who was at the HKUST meeting, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that he had “all along been concerned about healthcare development in Hong Kong.”

He said HKUST planned to allow degree holders to enrol, meaning those who have studied an undergraduate degree unrelated to medicine can study at the medical school.

“[I] believe that for young people who did not study medicine in university, but hope to change fields and become a doctor, this presents an attractive career development path,” he wrote.

Leung added that the university would have “rigorous checks” in place to ensure students meet all requirements and standards.

He also said the university was seeking more resources to set up an innovation and technology park as well as additional student dormitories.

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