Politics

UK Indo-Pacific minister Rosie Winterton has visited Hong Kong’s flagship tech hub to discuss plans to expand technological collaboration in the Greater Bay Area, while aiming to strengthen business, education and people-to-people partnerships with the city.During her visit, Winterton also raised concerns about the jailing of former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying in talks with Cui Jianchun, Beijing’s top diplomat in the city, and local officials.“What we want to do is to strengthen those ties across our business, across education and people,” she said in a media briefing on Friday.

Hong Kong’s leader has said the housing minister’s resignation was his “comprehensive political decision” in establishing accountability for the city’s deadliest fire in decades, with a three-member team to also investigate up to 50 civil servants.Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu also said on Thursday that he had decided to stay on to spearhead comprehensive reforms.Nearly a year after last November’s Tai Po inferno, which claimed 168 lives and displaced about 5,000 residents, Lee announced that Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin had tendered her resignation a day before.

At least one senior official will take the rap for the deadly Tai Po fire as part of a set of “bold, comprehensive and far-reaching reforms” the Hong Kong government will announce on Thursday afternoon, sources have told the South China Morning Post.The official’s expected resignation would be part of the political accountability that the government hoped to underscore along with major reforms on administrative accountability that will go right to the top, one source said.The shake-up is expected to serve as the opening move towards broader structural reforms and set in motion legislative changes to ensure mechanisms are set in place to prevent a repeat of a tragedy of such a scale in the city.

One word will hang over the Hong Kong community in the run-up to next month’s anniversary of the dreadful Tai Po fire that took 168 of our fellow citizens’ lives: accountability. By the time we mark the occasion, we will know if we still have a system based on ministers taking political responsibility for failures in their policy areas or whether we must revise our constitutional arrangements.The fire at Wang Fuk Court, which broke out on November 26 last year, traumatised the whole population of our city as well as devastating the lives of those directly involved, first responders, survivors and victims’ families alike. There was an outpouring of sympathy and support as people everywhere rallied to do what they could to help.The government established a committee of inquiry, led by Justic...

Finance ministers from 21 Asia-Pacific economies recently met in Hong Kong, the first time the city has hosted them. A practical question sits one level down.Picture the treasury team of a company running its regional business from Hong Kong. It arranges funding in several currencies, pays across markets and manages the risks that follow. Its question is: how can Hong Kong’s services help it operate more efficiently and at lower cost?Those needs are a practical lens for reading the five-year plan and the chief executive’s policy address. The plan sets the direction; the address puts dates on it. In our research exchanges with think tanks on the mainland and in Hong Kong, the same concerns come up: not more products but what makes products usable – settlement, term funding and collateral. T...

An international arbitration body in Hong Kong is exploring business opportunities in the Middle East and Africa, citing the city’s neutrality and predictability as key draws for new markets amid rising geopolitical tensions.Domitille Baizeau, co-chairwoman of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, said the city had benefited from an overall shift in global business growth from Europe to Asia, with overseas businesses increasingly choosing Hong Kong to arbitrate disputes.The international commercial arbitration specialist was speaking on the sidelines of the ADR in Asia Conference, an event organised by the centre last week. The conference brought together legal practitioners to discuss the latest developments in alternative dispute resolution and the use of artificial intelligenc...

Hong Kong’s civil service has long enjoyed a reputation for efficiency, professionalism and probity. It has also been a pillar of stability, particularly during the transition from British to Chinese rule.Outside the general and administrative grades, many civil servants spend much of their careers in relatively specialised areas of responsibility. This allows them to develop deep expertise and makes them dependable regulators and administrators. However, it can also make it harder to adapt when new challenges cut across established departmental boundaries.Hong Kong was once a British outpost built on trade. Government played a relatively limited role in economic development, while free trade, market forces and the city’s strategic position at the crossroads of East and West helped it pros...

Hong Kong authorities should act as a “visible hand” to break down barriers erected by vested interests and revive growth momentum through reform under its maiden five-year plan, a former Beijing official overseeing the city’s affairs has said.Deng Zhonghua, former deputy director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, also said the city had to adopt a reform-oriented approach to empower emerging industries through deregulation. Hong Kong also needed to address “deep-rooted conflicts”, including uneven benefits from development, through improving mechanisms for sharing the fruits of growth in housing, healthcare, elderly care and education.“[The five-year plan] marks a shift from a free market adopting a positive non-interventionist approach to an organic combination of...

Hong Kong’s Fire Services Department will bear “ultimate responsibility” for following up on fire safety complaints across the city, the security chief has said, as an independent committee report is expected to identify the department as among those responsible for last year’s deadly Tai Po blaze.Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung made the pledge on Friday, a day after the judge-led committee submitted its final report to the government. The minister said a series of legal reforms would be rolled out alongside administrative measures to address fire safety shortcomings.A source earlier said the report had identified failings by the Fire Services Department, the Buildings Department, the Labour Department and the Housing Bureau’s Independent Checking Unit that contributed to the ...

Beijing has slammed “irresponsible remarks” by Britain after a UK report said Hong Kong’s national security law had further diminished the openness that underpinned the city’s success.In the United Kingdom’s latest six-month monitoring report on Hong Kong, released on Thursday, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said he was “deeply concerned and disturbed” by the continued imprisonment of former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, who was jailed for 20 years over national security offences.“We continue to call for his immediate release and will raise his case consistently as part of our frank and constructive engagement with the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities,” he said.In the report’s foreword, Miliband said Lai’s case, alongside recent developments in the trial of former leaders of the now-disb...