People were pointing to the bamboo as the cause of these things. This city is built on bamboo. It's actually more the other materials that we used in this big renovation project. Some of the workers scrambled to go and buy some compliant netting, but they only affixed it to the lower floors so that they would pass the safety inspections. Above this, of course, is the general, you know, the massive amount of grief and anger that's
in society right now. They have been able to stop all the protests and stop most of the dissent from Hong Kong in the past five or six years, and this may undo that. Hello and welcome to the forecast. It's been called the Fire of the Century. The blaze that engulfed 7 high rise residential buildings in Hong Kong's Taipo district was the deadliest the city has seen
in over 70 years. 156 people are known to have died, 30 are still missing, while fifteen people have been arrested for alleged manslaughter in connection with the fire. Grief has understandably overwhelmed the city and fuelled an uncontrollable anger towards those in power. Today, almost a week after the file, we ask how did this tragedy unfold? Why is Hong Kong still enraged and what does it tell us about the city that once prided itself on its transparency and democracy?
Well, joining me now from Hong Kong, Tom Grandy, founder and editor of the local media, Hong Kong Free Press, and Selena Chung, chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association. Welcome to you both. Tom, if I could start with you. I mean, we've, we've seen the pictures of this fire. It was truly extraordinary, even for those, you know, living in a city that had the Grenfell fire from a few years ago.
How did this thing happen? Initially people were looking at the bamboo, especially international observers. It may look disastrous to folks, you know from outside and we can talk about that a bit later, but it's actually more the other materials that we used in this big renovation project, this £32,000,000 renovation project whereby there was netting to prevent things from falling down that at first was thought to be
compliant. It had passed tests and in the last couple of days we've learned that it indeed wasn't. There was also Styrofoam, some foam boards put on the outside of windows that exacerbated the spread of the flames and the the fire alarms were faulty. But to get down to the nitty gritty, what has occurred is that this renovation was costing about 17 and a half, 1000 lbs for each of the households.
Now, workers had allegedly installed substandard netting to replace some damaged material after a series of typhoons in Hong Kong that were always also international news. And then there was a chain of other fires, other bamboo scaffolding, sort of renovations going on around the city. So some of the workers scrambled to go and buy some compliance netting, but they only affixed it to the lower floors so that they would pass the safety inspections.
Compliant role of netting cost £5.40, the dodgy stuff cost a pound so they saved just over £10,000 and now 156 people are dead. Extraordinary, I mean, I must say, you know, with the first time I've arrived in Hong Kong many years ago and saw bamboo scaffolding outside, you know, some incredibly, you know, granite, glass, funky skyscrapers. I thought, what's going on here?
But actually bamboo is an incredibly efficient way because it's so elastic and so sturdy of using scaffolding around high rise blocks. I just didn't know that. Tell us about the area, Selena, where you know these people lived. I think it was called 1 Foot Court exactly in Typo. So tell us about 1 Foot Court and tell us about Typo. What kind of people live there? So 1 foot court is a kind of like government build subsidized housing, but they are owned by property owners who bought them
years ago. So a lot of the people living there are middle class or they build their families up from decades ago in the 80s and the 90s. It's located in an area that is quite central to a region we call New Territory. So it's sort of in an urban area that's right at the outskirts of the bustling business business districts of Hong Kong. It's very residential, but it's
also close to nature. And so a lot of people will live there because the cost of living is relatively lower than if people were living on Hong Kong Island or in the central areas of Kowloon. And they would then commute to the town. It would take maybe around an hour until recently when a new train line was extended. So yeah, so it's got a lot of population in just in that district. And the one for court is a pretty big housing estate close to the train station.
And a lot of people commuting into a typo area will have passed by one for court. And next is another sort of lower income housing estate. So there's sort of side by side, which is very common kind of urban planning in Hong Kong. So I think overall the the population in Bonfour Court, the the sort of around the middle class, they're not the lowest income kind of population, but they're not either very well.
And Tom, just to get back to the fire briefly, what really struck me and I think, you know most observers here is that you had not just one tower block that went up in flames, but but many. How did the fire manage to jump from 1 tower block to another with such ease? Well, that that's been investigated now by the police and an anti corruption watchdog.
But you can imagine as these, you know, netting is, is flying around that I mean, when we were down there on the first night, some of the embers seemed to end up in a nearby school and the, the the firefighters had to go and put out that. So one of them remained unaffected. And some residents are going back to retrieve their belongings in the next day or two. But it it spread very fast. It was a #5 alarm. We haven't seen one of those. It's the highest level in like
17 years. But Hong Kong does have a history of dramatic lethal fires over a century. And each time, because this is a laissez faire, you know, not many regulations in Hong Kong economy. Each time they've bought in more and more safeguards. But ultimately, you know, this this as as the months and years pass, we might get down to the real nitty gritty here, which which could be, you know, corruption in the ranks of these building committees, which has long been a story in Hong Kong
as well. So one thing Tom has come up is this, you know, is the importance of bamboo as a scaffolding, but also more than that, bamboo and identity politics in Hong Kong. Can you just explain that to me please? People got a little bit, you know, hot headed about having the early parts of this crisis. People were pointing to the bamboo as as the cause of these things. This city is built on bamboo, if you will. And like the neon you've been to Hong Kong. It's an iconic site in the city.
It may look disastrous to foreign eyes. You know, it's it's metal that's used everywhere else, but it's super fast. It's versatile like Lego. You can create sort of shapes very awkwardly in in nooks and crannies in a city that has the highest population density in the world. And any Hong Konger downstairs will tell you that it's stronger than steel.
You know, mainland firms have really struggled to bid for construction projects sometimes in Hong Kong because they're just used to using steel and and bamboo scaffolders, you know, are highly skilled. It's a dying art. They are going to phase it out even before this crisis. So I think some people jump to conclusions a bit here, but Hong Kong is here and especially abroad see it as a kind of iconic identifying sort of thing.
In Hong Kong. It's something that, and this is the key thing differentiates a city from the mainland and the Hong Kong identity is constantly perceived to be under threat. And so people were very defensive about the robustness of bamboo. And actually, you know, I went down today and you can see that the bamboo has has largely survived this blaze. And, and the real cause was of course, the netting, the Styrofoam and, and things like that. So it looks like.
That's fascinating. So they're not using bamboo in Shanghai or Beijing, they're just using it in Hong Kong. They do still in parts of the mainland, but but it's, it's very iconic in Syria. I've been walking around today and you're kind of seeing these naked buildings because they've been pulling down this netting. You know, I saw it happening in real time. But but it, it's still an
incredible sight to behold. And like spiders, these highly skilled construction people go up and down to dying art. It's a little more expensive I believe, but it's it's very versatile and fast in this fast moving, very dense city. And if the if your main point of differentiation between you and Hong Kong supposedly free and the mainland not so free is bamboo scaffolding, I guess you've got a bit of a problem, haven't you? It's not the only point of
differentiation. The entire identity crisis, I suppose this city that is a borrowed place on borrowed time a lot of the time always going down to some countdown. You know, it's identity was often based on on what differentiated it from China. And now we see whether it's through the demographics, the economics, the physical sort of changes in terms of the new border crossings or structures like the bridge to Macau or, or the, or all of the ports, the
economic links. It is, as you mentioned, the authorities want it to be seen as a sort of great Greater Bay Area identity with that area in southern China, you know, Shenzhen, Guangdong. So people can be very defensive about those things that still make give Hong Kong its charm or or the difference between here and just 20 miles north in mainland China. Selena, we know that there are investigations going on and you know, I think 15 people have
been charged with manslaughter. Who are the people of Hong Kong blaming? Interestingly, the people of Hong Kong are not so much passing the blame onto the construction company or the workers or the executives of these companies, but the whole system around which the renovation project came about. So it was in around 2009 when the government passed a policy where certain buildings would be issued with mandatory inspection orders.
And if the inspection didn't go well, they would be required by law to hire a renovation company to do exterior renovation. Basically to make sure that the, the, the bits and pieces are not falling from the building and hurting people or other things around the safety of the building. And so this means when entire housing estate is under an inspection order, they are required to do the renovation
within a certain period of time. And the ownership corporation, the building committee, you know, formed by people who are property owners will have to go through the tendering process. And a lot of the renovation companies are basically ganging up on the property owners because they have limited time to do this and they have to do it. And this means that there are a lot of corruption going on.
Some of the construction companies, they are basically the same people forming different companies in the process to join the tender together. They fix the prices and or they either or they may be colluding with the owners corporation, the people running that committee to forge the whole building to chip in for the project. So this is a very, very common problem in Hong Kong.
And basically all of the property owners would know something about the process or have been through how painful it is. It's difficult enough to get a building with thousands of property owners to agree to chip in on something that is very expensive. And so there's been a lot of effort in Hong Kong trying to, you know, tell the government that this policy is not working.
And instead it's fostering the corruption of the construction industry in Hong Kong. And so in in this situation, people see that happening because the Wonford Court residents last year basically revolted against our own ownership corporation, thinking that it was corrupt and disagreed with the contractor that was being hired, the ferry contractor. Now that is accused of manslaughter and they were unable to do that.
They were able to basically overthrow the ownership corporation, but they were not able to cancel the contract that was already signed. And if they were to, why weren't? They able to do that? Who blocked them? Property owners formed factions among themselves and they were able to call extraordinary general meetings and, you know, votes of no confidence to overthrow the previous ownership corporation.
And however, by then the contract for the renovation has been signed and they were not able to avoid it. If they did, they could be sued and it would be a very lengthy legal process and could increase the ultimate cost of the renovation. So they just went ahead with with what was said by the previous term basically.
And so a lot of people in Hong Kong understand this process very well and they understand how it came about, how negligent company was selected and, you know, led to this outcome. So no, I wouldn't say that people were passing the blame or feeling very, you know, at least emotionally passing a blame on
to those 15 people arrested. But they very much notice the system that created all these failures and ultimately I'd say everything that can go wrong has gone wrong for this housing estate that led to probably 6 lives being lost. And you know, Tom, the way Selena describes it, you know, it's quite a familiar tale. We have similar issues between leaseholders and freeholders and big construction companies in
this country. But to what extent does this kind of problem, this systemic problem, we get coverage in the Hong Kong media? And do the people that are now being blamed get cover from the political class, from the political leadership in Hong Kong? I mean, while talking about the UK, this does have echoes of the Grenfell disaster, you know as well.
But to to actually dig down into how that kind of scam works with these building committees, there will be vested interest that sort of stage a coup to take control of of that governing committee, stay in store friendly security companies, you know, cleaning firms, shops with some kickbacks going on and ultimately the property management company. But it's the building repairs that are the most lucrative.
That's where you see the inflated costs and the kind of substandard word work that you you saw at Wankford Court. So with bid rigging, you're going to see some parties that were sort of taken in turns to to liaise with each other, generally over the phone with no paper trail, of course, to ensure a pre selected winner through artificially inflated bids. And the losing bidders might get, you know, lucrative subcontracts or whatever.
But that's sort of how it works. And there is meant to be some sort of accountability process that you're asking about. You know, unhappy residents can approach the Lands Tribunal, but the, and there is this building management ordinance to govern this stuff. The fact is it's very slow and it's very expensive. And Chief Executive John Lee, Hong Kong's leader this morning did sort of allude to this kind of problem in Hong Kong in terms of reform.
But the real questions now is, is when he he says there's going to be an independent inquiry, Is it going to go through an ordinance we have for that which actually is empowered to subpoena, subpoena people? And he talks about a judge leading it. We've seen a lot of hand picked judges for like national security cases. We're now under the national security era. So how is this kind of investigation going to pan out?
And the ultimate question, you know, there seems to be a bit of impatience with people so far who are pointing the finger at the government is, is this this new era in Hong Kong? Is, is it going to be that capacity to sort of self criticize and see if there are any wrongdoing or any issues or things that need revamping, you know, within the government and all these it was inspected a week before this fire as well as much as it has been said that they they have pulled the fast
one with this netting. So the question is, how deep are they going to go with this kind of probe? Onto the new national security law that was imposed by Beijing onto Hong Kong in contravention of the one country 2 systems arrangement, you know in the in the early stage of the pandemic, to what extent can these grievances be aired in the media, for instance, or in the public space without leading to repercussions or people getting arrested or getting fined
Selena, first you. We have already seen the started seeing some of the repercussions. At least three people have been arrested, I think questioned and on grounds of sedition after they've come up with petitions asking for an independent investigation or coordinating some of the aid efforts surrounding this disaster. The government hasn't started, you know, as big of a widespread crackdown on speech like it is in 2020 and 21. But I wouldn't be surprised to see more arrests being made.
And so today there were several people, I think they were somewhat of former, former politicians forming a group and, you know, urging the government for action going. They were going to make some policy recommendation to discuss, you know, viewpoints and called a press conference. And it was called off this morning and three of the organizers were called in by national security police for
questioning. And they were asked not to discuss what police, you know, told them or asked them to do. That's kind of extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, so, so we're dealing with a, you know, with a construction issues, some dodgy materials, some very localized corruption. And yet you've got the national security, the police or the people who enforce the national security law getting involved at this level, you know, calling people in for questioning, arresting some.
What are they afraid of here? What do you think they're afraid of, Selena? Yeah. My sense is that the cause for people to seek independent investigation, to look at the systematic failures may touch on some nerves. And I would have to rewind a little bit into how these ownership corporations are run. They're very much tied to local politics.
And you know, when you have district elections, different political parties in the past and politicians, they will try to exert their influence through these ownership corporations. So sometimes some of the ownership corporations would have advisors, external advisors, and some of these external advisors would be district councillors.
They are. They used to be mostly elected representatives, and so people would view some of the ownership corporations as being leaning towards a certain political party. And then, of course, by extension, if problems arise, they will, you know, blame the influence that was going on and, you know, wonder if, you know, there were other kinds of conspiracies going on.
And within housing at states in Hong Kong, other than ownership corporations, there used to be a kind of body called mutual aid committee. They kind of were complementary with ownership corporation in the past, but with fewer powers to take decisions for their state. And those mutual aid committees were seen as a kind of counterweight to ownership corporation after political problems and exacerbated. So the government disbanded.
Almost all of these mutual aid committees prevent activists or the pro democracy elements from being able to act as account. So I think there is a very strong sort of political undertone in all of this and the government will see it. And that's why that's part of the, I think it's part of the motivation for them to really clamp down on this heavy
handedly. But above this, of course is the general, you know, the massive amount of grief and anger that's in society right now, that's boiling, that's risking boiling over. They have been able to stop all the protests and just not most of the dissent from Hong Kong in the past five or six years. And this may undo that, that work that the Hong Kong government has been doing.
And that's why during this delicate moment, I will not be surprised that the government tries very hard to control what people will will do in public space to express that anger and grief. Tom, describe that anger, because I mean, the last time I was in Hong Kong was in 2019 when there was a lot of anguish and anger about an extradition law that was going to be introduced by the then chief executive, Carrie Lam. She then ditched it.
But there were a lot of people on the streets and of course the students took over some of the universities and there was real trouble there and there was anger. But how does that anger then compared to the anger that you see now? It's hard to really say how folks feel. 11 student, 19 years old. Miles, He was handing out a petition urging accountability, asking for an independent probe. He was seemingly arrested.
The police will not confirm it, but he left the police station yesterday and his petition disappeared. But look at the context here as to what happens in China when there are similar tragedies, disasters, whether it's Sichuan earthquake, train crash near Shanghai or construction or financial scandals. There seems to be a little bit of breathing room for expression in the moments it occurs. But ultimately, to answer your early question, it is about control in terms of people organizing.
And so an hour ago in this newsroom, I asked my staff, make sure you get people's contacts, folks who might be victims talking about this online. Their posts might disappear. They may be more reluctant to speak later. We've seen these sedition arrests, arrests for inciting hatred against the government, the kind of thing I thought might happen in weeks or months, not so quickly, to be honest, because, you know, you need a kind of pressure valve after
these things happen. And yet here we are. But yeah, people are, the authorities are allergic to
people organizing. And I think that they're getting a bit of 2019 protest vibes from some of the things they've seen in terms of the speed of the reaction, the support networks, the websites that came up overnight at at at at a level that really the government can only dream of in terms of instant response, let alone messages on certain walls that resemble the pro democracy, so-called Lennon walls. Those were taken down last night.
And a few other elements that have made them, I think, a little bit nervous as we go into a Patriots only election on Sunday. And Selena, I guess there must be a lot of pent up frustration and anger ever since the national security law was imposed and the whole democracy project was kind of shut down. Is that, is that what we're seeing now? That this pent up anger and frustration, the diffuse for that has literally been lit by
this extraordinary fire? Yeah, during the pro democracy movement, a lot of the anger is towards the Hong Kong political system, how the government was formed and whether people were given a choice of their own government and representatives. This is different. This is preceded by immense grief. Anyone seeing such huge fire, so many lives lost will feel, will feel immense grief.
And we saw this yesterday and the day before when there were sort of memorials set up for people to lay their flowers and express that grief. And the queues were almost 2 kilometers long. People had to queue up for 2-3 hours before they even reached a memorial to just lay their flower, make a prayer of some sort.
And I think over the five or six years past, the at least four people who've stayed in Hong Kong instead of immigrating to places like UK or Canada, they have accepted the current system. They know that it's futile to resist it or to do much about it. They go about their lives and they will accept it to the extent that Hong Kong is able to guarantee them personal safety and some level of good governance.
And now we see that as pierced. And so people realize that even if they didn't come out with political demands, their lives could truly be threatened by the system that is currently in place. So that makes this anger dangerous and a challenge to the current government.
And and Selena, just on the question of grief, I mean, you know, most of Hong Kong, I'm guessing lives in places like the ones like the tower blocks that burnt down in the, you know, these tall high rise buildings with, you know, relatively small, you know, quite cramped apartments that cost a lot of money given the space that you're living in.
That's how Hong Kong lives. So there must have been a real identification amongst those people, even those who didn't know anyone in the buildings that burned down or didn't lose any friends or relatives. They they must really identify
with those poor victims. Yeah. And we see that multiple housing estates similar to one for court their owners corporation, the property owners have caught emergency meetings questioning the renovation projects that's going on at the same time at this current moment to ask whether the materials used there were compliant. They asked the construction companies to come and test the materials in front of their eyes.
And if they can't find the answer, the some of the ownership corporation decided to just take down the netting material around scaffolding right away while they try to find out. So and for myself, one of my friends living in a relatively well off district, they I think in the process they hires at least one company that has the same one used in one full court. I don't know which one it is exactly, but my friend's father basically has been retired.
He's in the corporation and it's been a battle to just get this done. And now this happens and he literally said his blood pressure goes goes up every time he sees the news because thinking of what is going going to happen or could have happened to where he lives right now. So yes, a strong sense of identification and and sympathy
for the victims there. And Tom, I mean, there's, you know, I guess there is a difference between this sort of raw grief around these, you know, these terrible fires compared to the more abstract issues of, you know, democracy, freedom or security that we had in 2019.
You know, that, you know, the abstract issue of the extradition law, which which did sort of touch on fundamental issues of freedom and and law and order inside Hong Kong, but nothing, as, you know, as in your face and as raw and as tragic as this fire. Now, given where Hong Kong is politically, do you think that this will translate into something bigger, you know, than the demonstration we've seen
before? Or are people so cowed by the political system now that they'll eventually the the authorities will just count on them going away quietly? To be honest, I think it's more the latter. I'm more of a in the cynical camp. We are 10 years into running an independent news outlet here. Most of that time has been during the security law era, and much of any kind of resistance you may imagine has been stamped out that we're going into these Patriots only elections.
What does that? Explain that patriots only elections. Explain that to our. Audience only patriots can stand. I would think it's more comparable to the Iranian system maybe where the candidates are pre approved and the traditional opposition, the pro democracy figures that were famous, you know, all these years during a 30 year mostly peaceful Martin. Lee, Claudia MO, all those people that they're either in jail, right? Or they've been.
Claudia's died out but but many are in jail, they're in self exile or they've quit politics and rarely do you hear from them. So and 50 civil society groups at least have been disbanded. A lot of the independent media, Apple Daily, etcetera. The newsrooms have been raided. 1000 Journalists out of work. Jimmy Lai in jail.
Exactly. So all these channels of accountability, elections, you know, the media, etcetera, they've either been minimized, wiped out, you know, the district councils, the local representatives, it is all now a patriotic affair. And the government is very concerned about turn out on Sunday. Everywhere you go, every surface you can imagine is plastered with promotions because it of course has to look as credible as possible and it has been played with low turnouts since
the the electoral revamp. Now, I don't know how sensitively they're going to step around, whether they are expecting or encouraging victims of this tragedy to be voting. They won't have access to paperwork and ID We'll see how that's handled. But they initially thought they might, you know, delay these elections. But they are going to go ahead on Sunday despite everything. But I, I wouldn't too over excited as to this blowing up into any kind of massive protest or anything like that.
The authorities have been very swift to make arrests, you know, within hours basically. And, and, and it's now up to like 15. So the the narrative or, or whatever is being set as to who's to blame here. It's kind of further along, I think should these families seek to organize themselves and demand accountability beyond the construction firms or whatever, then we might, you know, see a
bit of trouble there. But I, I feel that, you know, this is an all-encompassing, all powerful, multibillion dollar national security project with its tentacles in every agency that you can imagine. It is very much a top down, bottom up affair. And people know the consequences and everybody. You'll see them in the comments. You know, when they saw the students speaking out a few days, kind of felt how it was going to go. And an example has been set, put it that way.
Celina, do you agree with that? Yeah, I think it could be the most likely scenario, to be honest. It's going to be a lengthy process just to investigate it and prosecute the 15 people arrested. I think the government has taken some, what I think is correct steps to allow that grief to be expressed. They organize the memorials, allowing people in different districts to go to the memorials. They've given information from the police interrogation very
quickly. That doesn't usually happen in any criminal investigation. And so if they, you know, give sufficient answers to people and prosecute some take some form of prosecution against against the perpetrators. So that will help release some of that anger and grief. And in 2012, there was another ferry disaster in Hong Kong
where around 40 people died. They had an independent commissioner at the time by a judge who investigated the police investigated it. It was a very long drawn out process that just wrapped this year. And that was 2012. So it took around 15 years, and 13 years later, of course, most of Hong Kong would have moved on, even though most of the families of the victims or the survivors still grieve from it and have to grapple with the
outcomes. So I would imagine it takes another 10 years for this affair to finally come to a conclusion and hopefully, in the process, some justice rendered. I don't imagine there will be, you know, dramatic reforms to
tackle this problem at the root. Maybe there will be reform in fire safety regulation, inspection procedures, construction regulation, but ultimately, you know, when it comes to the problems with the ownership corporations, maybe that system will be in place because it's much harder to fix something at the root than addressing the the causes or the things that led to the immediate outcomes.
Finally, Tom, I mean, do you think that this fire and this situation in Hong Kong, yeah, from the grief to the kind of lack of, you know, real political change that might result from it, you know, to the people who are going to end up in jail for it. Do you think it would feel any different if this fire were heaven forfend to take place in Hangzhou or in Shanghai? Or is Hong Kong now, effectively, even at a tragedy like this, essentially a part of
mainland China? There are some differences still. There is some transparency here. We remain in Hong Kong as a news team because you can go to the courts and bear witness. You can write the first draft of history from the legislature and see what's going on. And you can ask tough questions of officials. And one reporter this morning certainly did ask John Lee directly, you know, are you going to quit, basically? And that wouldn't. Happen in Beijing or in Shanghai? No, you don't get those
opportunities. So we are in a different era in Hong Kong. I don't think really any observer, I mean even some Grenfell victims have said, wow, arrests this quickly. It's hard to complain really about most of what's how the response has gone. And 155,000,000, you know, has been raised some of that government money, mostly from the public, but ultimately a lot of money flying around as this process, as Selena says, is going to pan on for the next decade.
Families may have those bailouts or whatnot, but ultimately they're going to want answers. They're going to want justice. That's and, and the, and the, and the government knows that that this is where it gets rather sensitive. So they're kind of jittery. There's an old Patriots election coming up, but it's too soon to say, you know, whether all this is going to sort of blow up and how people are going to feel about the government in the in the medium, long term.
All right, fascinating stuff. We're going to leave it there. Thank you very much to both of you for your time and stay safe. Tom Grandy and Selena Cheng, thanks very much for coming on to the forecast. That's it. Hope you enjoyed the programme. See you next time.