The fire that broke out in a residential complex in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong on November 26 destroyed seven 31-story buildings. More than 150 people have been confirmed dead, and several thousand have lost their homes. In Japan, the sudden, tragic news caused widespread shock, with some reports calling it the worst fire disaster of the 21st century. When I was living in Hong Kong, I would often pass by that complex, and I remember seeing the brown residential buildings many times from my train window. The tens of thousands of people who pass through this area every day are now confronted with the devastating transformation of a familiar landscape.
We know that the fire started from the plastic sheets covering the scaffolding for renovations that wrapped around each tower in the entire complex, and then spread to neighboring buildings. The central part of Hong Kong mostly comprises high-rise buildings, and the sight of plastic green sheets covering a work site is a familiar one. An extremely large number of people in Hong Kong live in residential complexes. Many city residents have experienced renovations in their own complexes, and many more are likely to undergo renovations in the future. That makes this fire extremely disturbing for many of the city’s people, a tragedy that hits very close to home.
Beijing insists that, after the mainland Chinese government enacted the “Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region” (known as the Hong Kong National Security Law) in Beijing in 2020, Hong Kong has been able to move beyond the turmoil of the 2019 protests. Ensuring public safety is a key policy of the Chinese government, but the strength of its “national security law system” will now be tested in the wake of these fires. Can Hong Kong’s residents truly feel safe?
To alleviate residents’ concerns, the Hong Kong government must act to ensure a disaster like this never happens again. To do that, it must investigate the cause of the fire, identify responsibility, and establish legal systems that satisfy residents. However, that will require the Hong Kong government to overcome a number of challenges.
Its national security law system puts Hong Kong in a very unique political situation. The establishment of the Hong Kong National Security Law has kept protests, gatherings, and anti-government rhetoric under strict control. There are virtually no pro-democratic activities, and very few articles in the Hong Kong media have been expressly critical of the government over the fire. At the same time, unlike the Chinese mainland under the socialist system, where the state controls society and the media, Hong Kong still does have a civil society that is not controlled perfectly by the government, and private media corporations still exist. Hong Kong is also a global financial center, and internet use is mostly unrestricted, including access to foreign sites. That in turn means that Hong Kong residents are well aware of facts behind the fire, making it impossible for the government to erase or hide them in a bid to create a surface sense of stability.
Certainly, it has become difficult to know what Hong Kong residents are feeling in the wake of the fire and what they expect from the government perfectly. In recent years, responding to political pressure, including repeated house searches of the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI), many academic institutions and media outlets have stopped conducting surveys on government approval ratings and other sensitive topics. Nonetheless, reports of the line of people visiting the site of the tragedy to bring flowers briefly reaching 1.6 kilometers show clearly that an overwhelming majority of residents are well informed and have been left shaken.
It has already been reported that construction workers regularly smoked near scaffolding and that fire alarms did not sound. Although these reports have led to multiple arrests already, residents also know that pro-government members of the Hong Kong Legislative Council were deeply involved in the renovation project, and that the government’s explanations of the legality of the fire-resistance of the protective netting have changed repeatedly as it has come under more scrutiny.
There have been calls to form a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) to investigate the incident. However, ever since the 2019 protesters made the same demand, establishing a CoI has become effectively impossible for the Hong Kong government. The Chinese government has already warned against anti-government activities by “malicious individuals” taking advantage of the fire. People distributing leaflets or starting online petitions calling for a CoI have been arrested by the Hong Kong Police Force on charges of sedition. Instead, the government promised only an investigation by an “independent committee” lacking powers such as witness summons. The Chinese government appears reluctant to compromise because public sentiment is unclear.
Yet without a thorough investigation, the sentiments of Hong Kong’s residents are unlikely to subside. Resolving the situation will require the Chinese and Hong Kong governments to have the courage to carry out such an investigation, and the ability to convince the people of Hong Kong that they are safe.
