A top Beijing cadre is coming to town later this month. National People’s Congress Standing Committee Chairman Zhang Dejiang (張德江), a third-ranked member of the Communist Party’s Politburo and director of the central coordination group for Hong...

They are just twenty-somethings but that’s not stopping them from launching ambitious plans to make their way into the local legislature through new political parties they founded. Some want a referendum to delineate the post-2047 status,...

The tidal wave of free-to-read online blogs and news portals, which started a decade ago along with the sweeping penetration of the internet, has prompted some industry analysts to sound the death knell for print media....

Hong Kong and Singapore have been competitors in many respects and their long-running rivalry has been intense and close. Recently, Singapore has been gaining the upper hand.  Hongkongers have watched their fair city lose ground and...

Hong Kong may have run out of luck in terms of its economic performance. But perhaps people of this city, a place that has never lost faith in capitalism for more than a century, should not...

Some young college graduates, still a bit wet behind the ears, founded the Hong Kong National Party last month with a pro-Hong Kong independence platform. Beijing lost no time hitting out with severe denunciations, yet its Hong...

When Donald Tsang made a distinction between people by political affiliation, he planted the seeds of disaffection as we know it today. Leung Chun-ying exacerbated it when he treated pan-democrats as enemies, although he has not publicly...

No matter how chaotic the voting was, extra funding for the controversial express rail link is in the interest of Hong Kong, and so was Chan Kam-lam’s nasty way of ending the filibusters. The reason: We’ve been...

The Civic Party retained its seat in the New Territories East by-election last weekend after its former member Ronny Tong Ka-wah quit the party and resigned from the legislature last year. New Territories East, now represented...

It’s only one month into the new year but it’s already beginning to look like a bumpy one, judging by recent world events. Hongkongers can congratulate themselves for not being embroiled in the tumult — after...

Former chief secretary for administration Anson Chan Fang On-sang told reporters at a rally outside Beijing’s liaison office Sunday the impact on “one country, two systems” of the abduction of five Hong Kong booksellers “is even graver...

A series of mis-steps by local officials have led to a loss of confidence among the public in the Hong Kong government. The public trust has eroded to such an extent that some people perceive an...

While Air France and Lufthansa flights may be grounded by massive industrial action if employees’ demands regarding remuneration and pensions are not met, we hear a rumor that our home carrier, Cathay Pacific, may encounter renewed...

Nothing out of the ordinary happened during last week’s historic meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou. The two cross-strait rivals stuck to the script and imagery. One looked the part of...

China may have as many as 30 million “bare branches” (bachelors who cannot extend the family tree) by 2020, the National Statistics Bureau has warned. The country’s gender imbalance is among the world’s worst: 118 baby...

Chen Zuoer, former deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, criticized the Hong Kong government at a forum last month for not moving fast enough on decolonization. He also lashed out at people...

Former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen was charged Monday with two counts of misconduct in public office. He is accused of failing to declare he had been in negotiations to rent a luxury flat from a...

A series of scathing rebukes to Li Ka-shing by Chinese state media has raised eyebrows overseas. One example is a report by Business Insider at the end of last month titled “China just publicly shamed the richest man...

Secretary for Development Paul Chan Mo-po devoted a post on his official blog to the property market with a stern warning to homebuyers that the market may be near an inflection point. In recent decades, Hong...

This year, the 70th anniversary of China’s victory in the Sino-Japan War, also marks 40 years since Chiang Kai-shek died in Taipei in April 1975 at the age of 87. In a commentary carried in the...