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POLITICSAug 13Hong Kong public rental housing wait edges up to 4.8 years, urban allocations riseThe composite waiting time for general applicants for long- and short-term subsidised public rental housing in Hong Kong has edged up slightly to 4.8 years at the end of June, authorities have said, adding that a higher proportion of coveted homes in urban areas was allocated in the second quarter. Despite an increase in the “composite” figure, which includes temporary flats under the light public housing initiative, the Housing Bureau said on Thursday that the average waiting time for general...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 13Hong Kong woman acquitted of protest-related charges after return from AustraliaA Hong Kong woman who returned from Australia has been acquitted of two charges linked to the 2019 anti-government protests, after a magistrate found insufficient evidence that she was involved in the unrest. Eastern Court ruled on Thursday that prosecutors had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that casino cashier Ami Chan Hui-ching, 21, carried two laser pointers and three bottles of spray paint for illegal purposes on September 8, 2019. Magistrate Edward Wong Ching-yu pointed out that...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 13Stop mourning Hong Kong. It’s evolving, not dyingHong Kong has changed since the turmoil of 2019-20. Few people would dispute this. The more important question is what kind of city it is becoming. It is evolving into a more nationally integrated yet still distinctive city. The emerging model seeks to combine market dynamism and international connectivity with clearer alignment to national development. This is not decline. It is a search for a viable identity and role. Critics such as Stephen Roach have argued that the Hong Kong of old is...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 12Hong Kong student avoids jail for seditious graffiti in commercial complex toiletA Hong Kong student has been spared jail for seditious acts in breach of the domestic national security law, after a court ruled that his good background, young age and the limited impact of his offences constituted “exceptional circumstances”. Leung Kai-lok, 19, is potentially the first person to avoid a custodial sentence for violating the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, although he was incarcerated for four weeks before sentencing. West Kowloon Court on Wednesday gave the defendant...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 12Hong Kong is no longer a Western playground – and it’s not looking backWhen it comes to bad prognostication, no one can beat Fortune, which came up with the mother of all “Hong Kong is doomed” narratives. In June 1995, the magazine ran its infamous “The Death of Hong Kong” cover story, predicting its demise following the 1997 handover to China. Stephen Roach, veteran China watcher and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, seems determined to follow in its footsteps. In 2024, Roach caused a stir by proclaiming “Hong Kong is over” in the Financial Times. He was...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 12Hong Kong’s five-year plan: what’s at stake?Hong Kong's five-year plan is being examined to understand its potential implications and what is at stake. This article discusses the significance of future government policies for the region.South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 12Why does Hong Kong need a 5-year plan – and will it crimp its free-market economy?As the government completes a public consultation exercise to craft the city’s own five-year plan to align with national development, the first of this five-part series looks at key questions, starting with the need for such a blueprint. Economist Heiwai Tang has a line he likes to use on free-market purists: “The market is almost always right, but it’s not always right.” While Hong Kong has long been ranked the world’s freest economy, Tang, an associate dean at the University of Hong Kong’s...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 11Hong Kong considers lowering heat-stress warning thresholds amid criticismHong Kong authorities are considering lowering the threshold for activating higher-tier heat stress warnings during abnormally hot weather, following public criticism that the alert was not upgraded even as the city sweltered through its hottest day on record. Commissioner for Labour Sam Hui Chark-shum said on Tuesday that the warning system was currently more responsive to “muggy weather” than conditions of purely high temperature and strong solar radiation, but the government would seek to...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 11Hong Kong-based mediation body ‘ready to tackle state disputes, serve as Asian legal hub’A former Hong Kong justice minister who now heads an intergovernmental mediation body based in the city has said the organisation is ready to handle state-to-state disputes, with six countries having nominated more than 100 mediators from the legal, diplomatic and academic fields. Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah, secretary general of the International Organisation for Mediation (IOMed), told the South China Morning Post that Hong Kong is uniquely positioned to serve as an international legal capital in...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 9Hong Kong’s 5-year plan needs ambition to match Beijing’s expectationsHong Kong’s first five-year plan will be judged not by how many initiatives it assembles. Instead, it will be judged by whether it explains where the city intends to be by 2030 and how it will get there. The consultation document covers the expected ground. It includes the Northern Metropolis; Hong Kong’s roles as an international financial, trade, maritime and aviation centre; integration with the Greater Bay Area and supporting the Belt and Road Initiative; and social priorities such as...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 8‘Addiction is irreversible’: Hong Kong urged to ban under-16s from social mediaHong Kong should follow international peers in legislating to bar children under 16 from social media to combat cyberbullying and addiction, education experts and lawmakers have said, while stressing the need for broad social consensus. At a panel discussion on Saturday to examine proposals to restrict social media access for under-16s, educators and lawmakers argued that legislation was needed to signal the government’s stance and drive efforts to prevent the next generation from being harmed...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 7Endanger Hong Kong’s national security, and I’ll take you down, Chris Tang warnsHong Kong’s security chief has warned he will take down anyone who endangers national security, while also slamming an embattled press group for lacking credibility ahead of an already delayed leadership election. Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung said on Friday that the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) was “not a statutory organisation” and that candidates for its executive committee reportedly included no representatives from mainstream local media outlets, undermining its...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 7Nominations for Hong Kong’s Election Committee to run from October 7 to 20Nominations for Hong Kong’s powerful Election Committee will take place in October, with the vote for 982 seats of the 1,500-member body – which picks the city’s chief executive and some of the legislative candidates – taking place a month later. A government spokesman said Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu had specified November 22 as the polling date for the committee’s subsector ordinary elections and that the relevant notice had been gazetted on Friday. The spokesman added that the nomination...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 7Hong Kong ‘actively considering’ dedicated offence to fight persistent child sex abuseHong Kong is “actively considering” creating a dedicated offence to target persistent sexual abuse of children, after more than 90 per cent of suggestions from a month-long public consultation backed a proposed overhaul of laws tackling sex crimes. Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung said on Friday that more than 6,000 suggestions were received throughout the consultation period, which began on July 7 and wrapped up on Wednesday. “All in all, over 90 per cent of suggestions supported...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 7Hong Kong’s Lingnan University student union ceases operations after 6 decadesThe student union of Hong Kong’s Lingnan University has announced it will dissolve after nearly six decades in operation due to “changes in the situation both on and off campus”, marking the latest in a spate of closures among such organisations in recent years. In a social media post on Thursday, the student union said it had passed a resolution to dissolve after holding a recent joint meeting. Its decision means that only two of Hong Kong’s public universities still have active student unions,...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 6Criticism of Hong Kong’s economy and rule of law is baselessRecent criticism of aspects of Hong Kong’s economic development and work on safeguarding national security, by a so-called expert on Hong Kong, is factually baseless. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government rightly rejects the allegations. We must set the record straight. Since the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, Hong Kong residents’ livelihoods and Hong Kong’s business environment have steadily improved,...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 6Hong Kong must be realistic and flexible in re-engaging with the USThe recent decision by the US government not to extend its Hong Kong-related state of emergency saw the effective lifting of sanctions on nine mainland Chinese and Hong Kong officials. At a Ministry of Commerce press briefing, a spokesman called it “an important step in fulfilling the consensus” reached in negotiations. Some view the move as a part of the wider attempt at stabilising bilateral relations after US President Donald Trump’s visit to China in May and ahead of Chinese President Xi...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 6Hong Kong urged to boost public housing space and speed up flat allocationHong Kong authorities should set targets in the city’s first five-year development plan to increase the average living space for public housing tenants and raise the minimum size of subsidised sale flats as supply grows, a concern group has urged. The Federation of Public Housing Estates also said on Thursday that the government should make clear it aims to reduce the average waiting time for public rental housing to three years in the long run, rather than setting a time frame as a key...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 6Hong Kong police to merge Tin Sum division with Sha Tin and Ma On ShanHong Kong police will merge the Tin Sum division into the Sha Tin and Ma On Shan ones from August 30 to improve operational efficiency amid population changes and infrastructure development. A briefing was held at Ma On Shan police station on Thursday morning for members of the Sha Tin district Council, the Fight Crime Committee and area committees, as well as representatives of government departments and community partners. “The Police Force regularly reviews resource deployment based on local...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 6Heaps of documents, endless trials: the herculean workload of Hong Kong’s judgesMy 18-year-old summer intern is very scared of me. She spent the entire week watching me sit in front of my computer, in complete silence, motionless except for the occasional click of the mouse to move to the next electronic document, and barely breathing. She told me this could not be further from what she imagined a barrister’s life to be. And there was one thing she was particularly puzzled by: why were there so many documents? There were, indeed, many documents – over 40,000 pages of them,...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 6Hong Kong needs regenerated districts, not piecemeal renewalHong Kong’s redevelopment policy is approaching an institutional turning point. Recent government proposals – pilot schemes for additional plot ratios and cross-district plot ratio transfers – are presented as new instruments to stimulate redevelopment in ageing districts. Yet they extend the same paradigm that shaped policy for decades: incentivising redevelopment through floor-area bonuses, relying on land premium as the financial logic and assuming more buildable area will automatically...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 5To lead Greater Bay Area integration, Hong Kong can look to San FranciscoHong Kong’s first-ever five-year plan for economic and social development (2026-2030) is out for public consultation. The section on the “development of regional cooperation” stands out for its call to “advance the development of key cooperation platforms, and strengthen collaboration with other areas, provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the mainland”. Similarly, Shenzhen has set out an agenda for the high-level development of major cooperation platforms in its 15th five-year...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 4Hong Kong civil servant charged with misconduct over bogus littering tickets issued to 5A Hong Kong civil servant has been charged with misconduct in public office for allegedly issuing bogus fixed-penalty littering notices to five people, triggering court-issued arrest warrants and the wrongful arrest of an innocent person. Law Yui, a 41-year-old foreman with the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD), was charged by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on Tuesday. The charge followed an internal FEHD investigation that uncovered the alleged...South China Morning Post
POLITICSAug 2Legco-executive dialogue must deliver more than novelty for Hong KongExploring new channels for connection is important for enhancing communication. That seems to be one of the major themes of the first “new style Legco dialogue” with Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, held last week after lawmakers returned from their study trip to Beijing. Legislative Council members were clearly eager to share ideas with Lee, beginning with suggesting that the city’s 1823 public inquiry and complaint hotline be revamped and modelled after Beijing’s 12345 complaints...South China Morning Post
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