Hong Kong did not simply mishandle a tragedy; it demonstrated, once again, that it has become something fundamentally different from what it once was.
By JIANLI YANG Dec 9, 2025
On Saturday, the Office for Safeguarding National Security of the Central People’s Government in Hong Kong summoned senior representatives and journalists from several foreign media outlets for a closed-door meeting. Officials accused some international media organizations of spreading false information in their coverage of the recent Wang Fuk Court fire tragedy and the upcoming Hong Kong Legislative Council election, alleging that such reporting “smeared” the government’s work.
The Office — created in 2020 after Beijing imposed the Hong Kong National Security Law — has since become the public face of Beijing’s security apparatus operating openly in the city, empowered to investigate and prosecute national security offenses. At the meeting, an unnamed official read a prepared statement but declined to specify which reports were considered problematic and refused to answer journalists’ questions. A notice on the Office’s website warned foreign correspondents to “exercise self-discipline, take care of yourselves, and do not touch the legal red lines.” The notice did not disclose which media organizations were summoned.
The deadly apartment building fire that recently claimed at least 156 lives in Hong Kong has triggered a debate over construction safety, lax regulatory enforcement, and the failures that allowed such a catastrophe to unfold. The city’s leaders quickly ordered an investigation into the fire’s cause, and police made several arrests of individuals suspected of negligence. In any earlier era, these steps might have been seen as the first moves in a process of public accountability that would be scrutinized, debated, and supplemented by an outspoken press, civic groups, and elected representatives. But in the Hong Kong of today, this response to the tragedy reveals something deeper and far more disturbing: the city is now operating under a political logic indistinguishable from that of mainland China. The space once reserved for free speech, civil society, and bottom-up community mobilization has been replaced by a reflexive deference to Beijing and a determination to eliminate independent voices that might question the official narrative. .. [Continue Reading]
Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/12/one-fire-one-system-hong-kongs-fire-tragedy-and-the-city-that-no-longer-exists/