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As Hong Kong mourns the victims of its worst fire in decades, the response to the disaster reveals the ways in which the semi-autonomous city retains differences from mainland China – and how some of those differences are being eroded.
Hong Kong’s leader, John Lee, announced on Tuesday the creation of an “independent committee” to investigate the blaze, which killed 151 people at the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in Hong Kong’s New Territories.
Hong Kong has a tradition of independent, judge-led inquiries into disasters, something that would never happen in mainland China, where the judiciary is controlled by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and public discussion of tragedies is tightly controlled.
But since the crackdown after the 2019 and 2020 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, including the implementation of two national security laws, many legal experts believe that Hong Kong’s judiciary is no longer independent.
Jonathan Sumption, a former UK supreme court justice, wrote last year as he resigned from Hong Kong’s court of final appeal: “The rule of law is profoundly compromised in any area about which the government feels strongly.”
It is safe to assume that Hong Kong’s worst fire in decades, which appeared to follow months of complaints from residents about the potential flammability of materials used in construction works, is something that the government will feel strongly about. Authorities have already arrested 13 people, including several from a construction company, on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the blaze. No official has yet taken responsibility for the tragedy.
The death toll from the fire will loom over the legislative council (LegCo) elections on Sunday, Hong Kong’s equivalent of a general election.
But where in previous years there was feisty campaigning from different political parties and a rowdy public debate between candidates, this year, for the second time since the pro-democracy protests, it will be a “patriots only” affair, with only government-approved candidates being allowed to stand.
“Having eliminated all opposition parties, the government no longer fears that a large number of candidates could win seats in the legislative council who want to challenge the status quo and might raise embarrassing questions during debates over bills backed by the chief executive,” said Jeffrey Wasserstrom, chancellor’s professor of history at UC Irvine and the author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink. “What it does worry about now is something else that can be embarrassing: a small turnout.”
In 2021, the first time that LegCo elections were held under the “patriots only” reforms, turnout hit a record low of 30.2%. In 2016, the turnout was 58.3%.
Refusing to vote is one of the only ways that Hongkongers can safely voice their dissent against the government as other forms of protest have been criminalised. Over the weekend, Miles Kwan, a student, was arrested over a petition that demanded accountability from the government over the fire. Local media reported that two other people had been arrested.
“Before the national security law, there wouldn’t be any repercussions for people just for speaking out,” said Wasserstrom.
In mainland China, however, there are not any kinds of major elections – patriots-only or otherwise – that citizens can boycott.
It is also impossible to imagine China’s leader, Xi Jinping, participating in an unscripted press conference like the one Lee held on Tuesday. An AFP journalist asked: “You have spoken about leading Hong Kong from chaos to order and from order to prosperity. And yet this prosperous society allowed 151 people to burn to death. Can you tell us why you deserve to keep your job?” Such a question would never reach the ears of Xi in a public forum.
Similarly, although Hong Kong’s national security laws have done a lot to muzzle independent media, there is still a vastly more open information landscape than in mainland China, in part because Hong Kong does not block western social media platforms and Google.
Last week, an article published in the Chinese media about the “hidden dangers” of cities in mainland China following in the footsteps of Hong Kong’s high-density housing model was scrubbed from the internet.
The most direct comparison to a recent tragedy in mainland China is the Urumqi apartment fire in 2022, which killed at least nine people and sparked massive protests across China against the harsh zero-Covid measures in place at the time, which were believed to have prevented people from leaving the building. Those protests, which became known as the White Paper movement, spiralled into one of the biggest challenges to CCP rule since the 1989 Tiananmen protests, more than 30 years earlier. The Chinese government has tried to erase the 2022 and the 1989 protests from the public memory. The authorities will try to do the same in Hong Kong, but are unlikely to be as successful.
Additional research by Lillian Yang
