It makes sense that the KMT reached back to Yuan Shikai as they launched impeachment proceedings today against Pres. Lai Ching-te, whom they accuse of being a dictator. Yuan's 1915 bid for total power was the last time the KMT was on the side of democracy against a dictator. CKS? We don't know her.

Ahead of the Jimmy Lai verdict today, state-run Ta Kung Pao has published this huge four-page spread on “Apple Daily’s 100 Lies.” Many deal with the tabloid’s notorious celebrity gossip rather than political news. AD was never the paragon of ethical reporting but some of these are really reaching…

I knew this China Daily opinion piece on the Tai Po fire was going to be a bit unhinged but I was not prepared for two paragraphs on 9/11 and the Iraq War. www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202512/11/...

So I just learnt that Musk's revelation about how we need "3D streets" and how his Boring Co. would solve congestion came during a trip to HK. This guy claims to have invented tunnels here, with probably the most efficient metro system on earth. We know tunnels are great, Elon, it's called the MTR!

The Wang Fuk death toll is now 160, with six still missing and one survivor in critical condition. That means we finally say where it stands in the historical record. Even with a maximum of 167 deaths, it is still surpassed by the 1948 Wing On godown fire and the 1918 Happy Valley Racecourse fire.

This year’s LegCo election saw an unprecedented jump in the number of invalid ballots cast. The percentage was even higher in functional constituencies like Social Welfare (9.78%) and Education, which leaned pro-democracy before the 2021 overhaul. More via Ming Pao: news.mingpao.com/pns/%e8%a6%8...

Many are pressured or incentivised to vote, particularly if they work for Chinese SOEs. While it’s illegal to encourage others to cast spoilt ballots, doing so yourself is OK and ballots are anonymous. If this number goes up it suggests people feel pressure to vote but don’t believe in the process.

Volunteers and personnel from the government have removed flowers, messages and other tributes for victims of the Tai Po fire under the watch of police officers. In full: buff.ly/pYhWPuS

Appreciated Elaine’s input and how she covered bamboo scaffolding stories in the past. As much as we talk about social media blowback against int’l media that blamed bamboo, no good local journalist should’ve needed to see these online reactions to immediately be suspicious of the whole narrative.

The HK & Macao Affairs Office has lauded yesterday’s Legislative Council election turnout for “greatly surpassing” that of 2021. 31.9% of registered voters cast ballots yesterday. That’s 1.7% up from 2021 but still the 2nd-lowest on record — and with registered voters down 32,998 fewer HKers voted.

TKP is leading with 97% turnout among the Election Committee Constituency. This is the small circle who choose the Chef Executive. Like the CE himself, most run uncontested. Since 2021, they’ve also been responsible for returning nearly half of LegCo — most of these candidates also run uncontested.

1/ Beijing threatens international media to "watch your back" (自我珍重), "watch your step" (好自為之), "consider yourselves duly warned (勿謂言之不預). Unclear what media have published which is false.

when you thought you'd seen the wildest racial discourse online and there's always something more. saw this on X and FB today. so it's saying - racism depends on perceived attractiveness or lack thereof - physiognomy of imaginary subgroups of Han Chinese,

South Callipers Morning Phrenology

Appearing before media to cast his vote, John Lee says that every ballot “is a vote to protect the victims of the Wang Fuk fire,” implying that his gov’t will be unable to adequately address the disaster’s aftermath unless citizens vote （有片+多圖）李家超夫婦到高主教書院投票　呼籲選民踴躍投票-大公文匯 m.tkww.hk/s/202512/07/...

Ta Kung Pao made an AI election propaganda video. I’m so sorry but you have to see this. （有片）AI 歌曲《香港未來 投票做主宰》　籲選民以實際行動建設香港-大公文匯 m.tkww.hk/s/202512/06/...

hahaha the 1980s Japan discourse all over again

Four men aged 37-62 arrested in Hong Kong for social media posts suspected of "inciting others not to vote or cast invalid ballots" in Saturday's "patriots-only" Legislative Council vote.

It appears that pretty much all Hong Kong-based newsfluencers, even those with international bylines or appearances, got a memo within the last 12 hours that they should shut up about the deadly fire, or else face consequences. Related: the city's "Patriots-only" legislature has elections Sunday

A "democracy wall" at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) with a message urging the government to respond to public concerns over the fatal Tai Po blaze has been surrounded by plastic hoarding. HKFP has reached out to HKBU for comment. In full: buff.ly/WwxaS9i Photos: HKFP.

Ming Pao reports that a 26-year-old YouTuber has been arrested for inciting hatred re. the Tai Po fire. The man, “Kowloon King,” reportedly said the victims’ deaths were karmic retribution and we shouldn’t feel sorry for them. 大埔宏福苑五級火｜國安處拘YouTuber「Kenny」　涉發布煽動仇恨言論 news.mingpao.com/ins/%e6%b8%a...

Global Times' reporting on this story is currently more accurate than SCMP's

The Hong Kong National Security Office, in an article called "Those who use the disaster to destabilize HK will be punished no matter how far away", claims a small group of external hostile forces are exploiting the fire to incite unrest, re-enacting tactics similar to the 2019 protests

42.0% of Hong Kong's total prison population have not been convicted of a crime — a new record high, according to Webb-site.com.

So many news organisations around the world used this image. So many bunnies here and on other platforms stole it without credit. An excellent, emotional and powerful background piece to Tyrone Siu's superb photojournalism for Reuters. www.reuters.com/investigates...

Finally read "The Great Reckoning" (www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-gr...), and I'm struck by how the worldview the titular reckoning is said to challenge is not one I've ever held or encountered. Despite the subtitle, I learnt a lot more about what Americans tell themselves than I did about China.

Some interesting insights from Kevin Yam, the pro-democracy lawyer and activist now wanted by Hong Kong’s national security police. When it comes to the “independent committee” promised by John Lee to probe cause of the Wang Fuk fire, the devil may be in the details: hongkongfp.com/2025/12/02/b...

Former District Councillor Bruce Liu Sing-lee has been detained by national security police in Hong Kong, reportedly for calling a press conference today on high-rise renovation policy. The presser has since been cancelled. 大埔宏福苑五級火｜民協原偕民間人士辦記者會談火災跟進　今早突取消稱「有部門通知」 news.mingpao.com/ins/%e6%b8%a...

“Representative of the network where the fatal test-train collision occurred.” This kind of orientalist AI garbage would be offensive in any context. The fact that it’s illustrating a story in which 11 people died is beyond contempt. This is what the station in question actually looks like, FYI ⬇️

HK01 finds that substandard scaffold netting is an industry-wide problem. Safety certification at a different estate that uses netting from the same Shandong-based manufacturer as Wang Fuk is “100% fake” according to the testing centre. 宏福苑大火01追蹤｜兩屋苑用山東棚網‎ 京檢測中心：報告百分百假 www.hk01.com/article/6029...

Seven samples of the scaffold netting from Wang Fuk Court did not meet fire retardant standards, according to HK Chief Secretary Eric Chan. The ICAC has also found that compliant netting was mixed in with non-compliant netting in order to evade patrols.

DAB’s Peggy Wong, who defended the Wang Fuk Court Owners Corporation in Aug 2024 because they were doing a good job with repairs, is now reporting the OC to the police and ICAC for misconduct, negligence, and corruption news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/comp...

Hong Kong’s National Security Police have arrested former district councillor Kenneth Cheung Kam-hung and a female volunteer for “attempting to incite discord” for comments made about the Tai Po fire www.thestandard.com.hk/hong-kong-ne...

State-backed Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao has taken down an investigative report published on 28 Nov which cited industry sources saying building maintenance works effectively controlled by cartel, rife with corrupt practices in tender process, widespread cost and corner-cutting in materials.

state-mandated learned helplessness

As a HKer, yes this is wild. As a China reporter, this is 💯 standard. See this piece from state news agency Xinhua to understand how the recovery must unfold: “With the firm support of the Central Gov’t, the HKSAR Gov’t WILL LEAD ALL SECTORS OF SOCIETY to overcome the difficulties and move forward”

Now that Xinyan Huang has retracted his media statements, which he admits spread misinformation about bamboo scaffolding and the fire service’s response, I expect that @cnn.com, @reuters.com, @aljazeera.com, and every other outlet they quoted him will add corrections to their reporting.

HKers’ defensiveness around culture often gets dismissed as petty and reactionary by people who don’t understand power dynamics in the city — a place that’s never been meaningfully decolonised. With bamboo, it’s also about trying to hold accountable a government they didn’t choose and do not trust.

Watching this play out in HK is a shock to the system, but to anyone who’s seen it happen time and again in the mainland, it’s also all too familiar and predictable. After any disaster, “stability maintenance” (維穩) and “stabilising public sentiment” (穩定社會情緒) are always foremost official priorities.

I’ve seen the Wang Fuk fire variously described in int’l media as HK’s “worst fire since WW2” or even “in more than 100 years.” The death toll is still sadly rising but a quick factcheck for now: both the 1948 Wing On godown fire and 1947 SS Sai On fire were, as things currently stand, more deadly.

Reflexively blaming bamboo with no evidence and no effort to address regulatory failures is journalist malpractice but it doesn’t stop there. Portraying living in a high-rises as a poor-people-thing, not a choice people gladly make, is the most condescending West-brained thing I’ve read in a while.

International media, you can do better than this. "Bamboo" is maybe exotic and a compelling hook but it is too easy. The real story here is the growing culture of corruption, including a lack of accountability and oversight, that enabled a chain of human errors that led to this disaster.

Further political context: In the 2019 District Council elections, all 19 of the elected seats of Tai Po District Council were won by "yellow" (i.e., Hong Kong pro-democracy) candidates. The pro-Beijing camp was completely wiped out bar for the two ex officio members of the 21 person strong body.

Pro-democracy parties existed to be thorns in the government’s side — true enough. But the official story, that they “politicised” everything while the establishment camp championed livelihood issues, does not match the reality. See below for an example of how they also pushed back on local issues.

Folks often forget the fight for democracy in HK isn’t a “Beijing vs us” thing in matters of human rights - I mean that matters too - but also the fight for local representation so that problems like these don’t get swept under the rug

This 2024 post from the DAB’s Peggy Wong is quickly becoming infamous. In it, the pro-Beijing district councillor dismisses fire safety concerns about the Wang Fuk work as malicious rumours misleading the public, and accuses the Democratic Party of “provocatively live-streaming “ from the scene.

I’ll be anxious to find out how much the government has spent on promoting the upcoming LegCo election (and, of course, to compare that, alongside voter turnout, with pre-“improvement” elections).

Gotta push this one on the main timeline. Go see 世外 Another World!

In the 1950s, a Danish freighter captain became an unlikely international celebrity when he encountered monster storms but refused to abandon ship, commanding singlehanded until it sunk beneath his feet. It’s a great story I got to tell in my first YouTube script, a minidoc for Oceanliner Designs.

I’ve been listening to podcasts lately marking the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. One of the things I’ve learnt is how veneration for Queen Elizabeth I was an indirect method of condemning the policies of her Stuart successors — just like how mourning Elizabeth II was used in HK. History rhymes.