The US consulate in Hong Kong displayed commemorative candles in its windows on the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown on Thursday, while other diplomatic missions paid tribute with social media posts.

The annual move is often blasted by local and Chinese authorities, and has been cited by Beijing as “evidence” of foreign interference in a 6,300-word “fact sheet.”

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when the People’s Liberation Army cracked down on protesters around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Hong Kong used to be one of the few places on Chinese soil where annual vigils were held to commemorate the people who died in the 1989 crackdown.

But police banned the gathering at Victoria Park for the first time in 2020, citing Covid-19 restrictions, and imposed the same ban the following year.

No official commemoration has been held since the vigil organiser, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, disbanded in September 2021. Its leaders were arrested and are currently on trial.

Currently occupying Victoria Park – historically the site of Hong Kong’s vigils – is a five-day patriotic carnival organised by pro-Beijing groups.

Diplomatic commemorations

Earlier on Thursday, Britain’s embassy in China shared a social media post featuring an animation with scenes from the bloody crackdown. It was shared without commentary.

The British consulate in Hong Kong posted a reel of a mobile phone held aloft with its torch on, apparently referencing the candlelit vigils.

Washington’s mission in Beijing shared a quote from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating: “Those who sacrificed to uphold their unalienable rights of free expression and peaceful assembly will be vindicated someday.”

In response, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing had “long since reached a clear conclusion regarding that political turmoil that occurred in the late 1980s.”

The Canadian consulate in Hong Kong shared a Facebook post, which read: “Today, Canadians honour the memory of all who lost their lives, were injured or went missing during the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4, 1989. Canada stands with the survivors and the families and loved ones who continue to demand accountability.”

Meanwhile, the Australian consulate in Hong Kong shared on Facebook a photo of candles and a statement reading: “Today, we stand with communities worldwide in remembering those who lost their lives at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989. Australia remains steadfast in its commitment to upholding human rights, including freedom of association, of expression, and of political participation.”

In June 2019, then-leader Carrie Lam said that the city’s annual vigils were “proof that Hong Kong is a free place.”

A Hong Kong court is now hearing a landmark trial of the Alliance and two vigil leaders, Chow Hang-tung and  Lee Cheuk-yan. They are accused of “inciting subversion” under the national security law, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years behind bars. 

Another vigil leader – Albert Ho – pleaded guilty when the trial opened in January.

Hong Kong police have launched a two-week campaign to clamp down on jaywalking and inattentive driving following a surge in fatal traffic accidents over the first five months of this year.

Police said on Friday that two law enforcement operations, codenamed “Clearview” and “Autobinder,” would run until June 19, targeting careless driving and reckless road crossing.

“As of May 31 this year, the number of deaths from traffic accidents in Hong Kong reached 51, up 42 per cent from the same period last year,” police said in a Chinese-language media briefing. “Pedestrian deaths accounted for half of the total.”

See also: Hong Kong taxi driver in court over Ngau Tau Kok crash that killed 2

Police said an analysis showed that the primary causes of the high death toll were jaywalking and careless driving, with commercial vehicles identified as the most frequent vehicle type involved in fatal incidents.

During the operations, the police force will strengthen patrols using unmarked police vehicles, conducting strict enforcement against speeding, tailgating, using mobile phones while driving, and other forms of careless driving.

Police urged professional drivers to stay focused behind the wheel and adhere to traffic rules, and called on pedestrians to avoid jaywalking, weaving through traffic or ignoring traffic signals.

Pedestrians should utilise designated pedestrian crossings, subways and footbridges, police added.

The maximum penalty for careless driving in Hong Kong is a HK$5,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment. Jaywalking carries a fine of up to HK$2,000.

A 55-year-old man has pleaded guilty to making and distributing “seditious” materials, including ones that called for a boycott of the “patriots only” legislative elections last year.

Raymond Wong, a construction worker, was charged and brought to the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Thursday afternoon.

He was arrested by national security police on April 21, a government statement said on Thursday. His arrest was not known to the public before, as police did not issue information about it at the time.

Wong was charged with two counts of “doing with a seditious intention an act or acts that had a seditious intention,” an offence under Hong Kong’s homegrown national security law, also known as Article 23.

According to a court document, Wong allegedly made “paper sheets written with statements” and threw them “into a public space” from a 12th-floor flat in On Tat Estate, a public housing estate in Kwun Tong. The first count of the sedition offence was dated October 2, 2024, and the second one was dated December 5, 2025.

Local media reported that on October 2, 2024, a Kwun Tong district councillor found pieces of paper with phrases including “blow up corrupt police officers” scattered on the estate’s podium. The district councillor called the police and handed over 41 sheets of paper.

On December 5 last year, two days before the “patriots only” Legislative Council elections, a staff member at the estate’s property management company found sheets of paper reading “liberate Hong Kong, do not vote,” also on the estate’s podium.

Police were called, and they seized 16 pieces of paper with seditious phrases. Wong’s fingerprints were found on two of them.

Wong’s case was adjourned to June 9 for sentencing to await his background report, a social welfare report and a psychological report.

Sedition is punishable by up to seven years in jail. If the defendant is found to have colluded with an “external force” when committing the offence, they face a maximum of 10 years behind bars.

Jail terms handed down at the magistrate’s court, however, are capped at two years, or three when a defendant is convicted of more than one offence.

The maximum penalty for sedition was increased in March 2024, when lawmakers passed Article 23. Before that, it was punishable by up to two years, when sedition fell under a colonial-era ordinance.

By Jan Hennop and Matthew Walsh

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth is the headline speaker at Asia’s premier defence summit opening Friday, but China’s top officials aren’t expected despite weighty questions like Taiwan and the war in Iran.

Beijing’s defence minister is to skip the three-day Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore for the second year running, which analysts viewed as a sign of China’s rising power.

Yet, the forum that brings together top officials from around 45 nations has historically provided a setting for debate as well as quiet and high-profile diplomacy.

Defence Minister Dong Jun’s absence means no meeting there with Hegseth as China warns the US over its involvement with Taiwan and Washington seeks an end to the Mideast war.

The Middle East was the source of 57 percent of China’s direct seaborne crude imports in 2025 — 5.9 million barrels per day (mbd) — maritime tracking firm Kpler said.

Hegseth’s second trip to the Shangri-La Dialogue comes after US President Donald Trump’s visit to China in May, and his subsequent suggestion that US arms sales to Taiwan could be used as a bargaining chip with Beijing.

See also: China is ‘preparing’ to use military force in Asia, US says

Hegseth’s speech on Saturday is expected to be “quite strong against China, but mainly for internal (US) consumption”, said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

“I think under Trump anything is negotiable and even with enemies deals can be done… (even) with Taiwan as a negotiating chip,” Oh told AFP.

Trump said “fantastic” trade deals were struck after his visit to China, although details were vague and no breakthrough with Beijing emerged in the war with Iran.

China arrived as ‘major power’

As the US and Iran clashed again on Thursday, threatening to derail a fragile push for peace, it “is unlikely that any possible deal will be discussed at the Shangri-La Dialogue”, Oh said.

China sent Dong to the dialogue as recently as 2024, where he and then Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin met for their first substantive face-to-face talks in 18 months.

“Dong was absent last year, reportedly due to China’s reluctance to engage with… Hegseth,” said William Choong, principal fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute think-tank.

China said Thursday it would send experts and scholars from its army’s study institutions.

Major General Meng Xiangqing of the National Defense University will lead the delegation, which is to include scholars from the National Defense University, the Academy of Military Sciences and the Navy.

Two other former defence ministers Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu previously spoke at Shangri-La. Both were subsequently handed suspended death sentences on graft charges, analysts point out.

“It’s kind of a poisoned chalice for any Chinese defence minister to speak out publicly,” said Jennifer Parker, adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia’s Defence and Security Institute.

With Dong again not attending, one of the reasons seemed obvious, said Choong, writing for the Lowy Institute think-tank.

“For one thing, China has truly arrived as a major power in the region, so it does not really need to send its defence minister to brave a fusillade of questions and try to ‘score’ brownie points,” he said.

Beijing, however, like last year, risked not having a senior leader present if the two most pertinent global security issues — Taiwan and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz — do come up.

“At a time when perceptions of US leadership are falling, Beijing could soothe some jangled nerves in the region by reassuring delegates that it would use force against the island only as a last resort,” Choong said.

AUKUS focus

The defence ministers of the United States, Britain and Australia — the members of the AUKUS security alliance — are also due to convene.

AUKUS’s stated goal is to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region, though it is widely seen as a bulwark against a rising China, which strongly opposes the pact.

Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Friday that Canberra was seeking “the maintenance of the global rules-based order” in the region.

“We’ve seen China engage in a very significant military buildup… and it has not happened with the kind of strategic reassurance which (we) would expect,” he told journalists at the forum.

“Fundamentally, we want to have a productive relationship with China. We want to live in a world which is governed by rules.”

Australian media outlets have reported, citing unnamed sources, that the AUKUS nations are expected to announce a major project, perhaps involving uncrewed underwater vehicles.

A Hong Kong couple who took their children storm-chasing during Super Typhoon Ragasa last year have been acquitted of child neglect, with the court issuing them a good behaviour order for three years.

The couple, known only by their initials YKK and LRQ, appeared at the Eastern Magistrates’ Courts on Tuesday morning.

In March, they were charged with “ill-treatment or neglect by those in charge of child or young person” in relation to an incident on September 23 last year, when a No. 8 typhoon signal was in effect due to Super Typhoon Ragasa.

The couple went to watch the waves at a waterfront in Chai Wan with their two children. The mother and their five-year-old son were washed away by waves, and the father jumped in to save them.

The three were rescued by a boat operator and firefighters and were later taken to Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital. The mother and son were in a critical condition, local media reported at the time.

The couple’s nine-year-old daughter was not injured.

Magistrate Kestrel Lam ordered the two defendants to sign a bind-over order, an agreement between a court and a defendant to maintain good behaviour for a certain period. It is typically used for minor offences that are unlikely to be repeated, and the defendant is not left with a criminal record.

The bind-over order they signed was for a period of three years and in the sum of HK$2,000, meaning they will be fined HK$2,000 if they commit a similar offence during that time.

More than 90 per cent of Hong Kong companies, schools, and NGOs have incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) into their workflows, according to a survey.

According to a survey of 800 organisations conducted by the Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Limited (HKIRC), 94 per cent said they had used AI tools.

Among those, 63 per cent had not established an internal AI usage policy for employees, while 68 per cent had not conducted any AI training, the survey found.

HKIRC CEO Wilson Wong said on Tuesday that employees at almost half of the surveyed organisations had used unauthorised AI tools.

“While the penetration rate of AI in the workplace is exceptionally high, most organisations still face security risks regarding governance, tool usage and training,” Wong was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the government’s Digital Policy Office (DPO).

He was speaking at a joint press conference on cybersecurity, alongside representatives from the DPO, the Hong Kong Police Force’s Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau, and the Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT).

Security risks

Wong cited an earlier survey by the HKCERT, which found around 35 per cent of businesses using AI admitted to feeding company information into AI tools.

Some employees used open-source AI tools to process meeting minutes, for instance, which could lead to errors or data leaks, he added.

Wong said the HKIRC, which oversees Hong Kong domain names, would launch the Secure AI@Work Enablement Campaign to provide training and assistance in formulating AI policies, as well as suggestions for suitable AI tools and regulations on information that should not be processed by AI.

The campaign “will assist organisations in plugging governance gaps through training, AI strategy and policy formulation tools and advisory services,” the statement said.

Edmond Lai, chief digital officer of the Hong Kong Productivity Council, the parent organisation of the HKCERT, said that the HKCERT would seek to bolster public education and talent cultivation in AI and cybersecurity through publicity campaigns, such as AI-generated tram advertisements and videos.

China’s consumer prices ticked up in April as the cost of crude oil rose globally due to the Iran war, official data showed on Monday.

Helped by the surging oil costs, factory gate prices also continued to show signs of recovery, rising for a second straight month after being stuck in negative territory since October 2022.

However, analysts warn deflation is still a threat for the world’s second-largest economy as prices in other sectors continue to fall and overcapacity remains a headache.

China’s consumer price index (CPI), a key measure of inflation, last month rose 1.2 percent year-on-year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

The jump was due to “changes in international crude oil prices and increased demand for holiday travel”, according to Dong Lijuan, chief NBS statistician.

Domestic gas prices rose 19.3 percent on-year, Dong said, impacted by international commodity price fluctuations.

A five-day holiday at the beginning of May also typically sees more travel and spending in the weeks preceding it.

However, last month’s CPI was still well below the government’s two percent target for the year.

The April producer price index (PPI), which measures wholesale inflation, increased by 2.8 percent on-year — up from 0.5 percent in March.

It beat a Bloomberg forecast of 1.8 percent and marked the quickest pace since July 2022, when the PPI rose by 4.2 percent on-year.

The gauge slipped into negative territory that October and did not reverse until March.

“The rise in international crude oil prices drove up prices in domestic petroleum-related sectors,” the NBS’ Dong said in a statement, listing fuel processing and manufacturing of raw materials.

But analysts warn shocks caused by oil blockages in the Middle East are temporary.

“The fallout from the Iran War pushed up inflation again in April but price pressures remain narrow in scope and aren’t likely to build into a wider reflationary impulse”, Capital Economics said in a note.

“(With) overcapacity in most sectors unresolved and domestic demand growth still sluggish, the ingredients for a sustained reflationary impulse still appear to be missing.”

The owners of a dredger, which has been stranded off Lamma Island all year, have been ordered to expedite their salvage plan after failing to remove the vessel by a previous deadline set for April.

The 50-year-old Sea Diamond, a dilapidated cutter suction dredger, remains partly submerged off Ha Mei Wan, a rural Lamma Island beach.

A Marine Department (MD) spokesperson said on Thursday that it had been in touch with the owners, who “had previously attempted to refloat the vessel by removing the superstructure and pumping out water from the flooded compartments in a bid to remove the vessel.”

“However, the progress has been delayed due to heavy rainfall from time to time in recent weeks. In addition, the damage to its hull was found to be more severe than anticipated, which has complicated the salvage operation. The MD is urging the shipowner to expedite the salvage process and remove the vessel as soon as possible,” the spokesperson added.

Dredgers are used as underwater excavators, cutting and sucking up material from the seabed before discharging it via pipelines.

The ageing Sea Diamond was built in Singapore in 1976. It is unclear who the current owner is.

The department said the owners had already breached the Shipping and Port Control Ordinance, risking a HK$10,000 fine, after they failed to report the incident within 24 hours. Legal proceedings are ongoing.

The MD said there were no reports of oil leaks or hazardous materials seeping into the ocean. However, “the shipowner deployed an oil containment boom around the vessel as a precautionary measure as requested” by the department.

According to Hong Kong’s Shipping and Port Control Ordinance, if stricken vessels are not removed by the owner, the Marine Department will make arrangements and recover costs from the owner.

HKFP has reached out to Islands District Councillor Lau Shun-ting for comment.

By Mary Yang with Tommy Wang in Hong Kong

Vacuum cleaners and vapes could get more expensive if the Iran war drags on for much longer, Chinese factory owners and traders warn, as the world’s manufacturing hub reels from “crazy” costs.

Weeks of US-Israeli strikes on Iran and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz have choked Asia’s oil supply, stymieing the production of plastic — derived from oil — across the region.

Manufacturing giant China has been comparatively sheltered from fuel shortages thanks to oil reserves and renewable energy, but local factories are picking up a ballooning raw materials bill.

“Basically, we’ve been losing money on all our orders,” said Bryant Chen, a manager at vacuum cleaner factory RIMOO in southern Guangdong province’s Foshan.

The price of plastic has risen roughly 50 percent since before the Iran war, Chen told AFP as workers behind him fastened suction tubes to metal tanks.

“The costs of the products that we are making are being very greatly affected,” the 42-year-old said, listing plastic, copper for the vacuum’s motor and raw materials in its power cords.

“Typically at this time we’d be entering peak season, but compared to the same period previously, shipment and production data aren’t very optimistic.”

Two hours away, plastic traders in storage hub Zhangmutou said price fluctuations were the worst they’ve seen in decades.

“It has never been this crazy,” said Li Dong, 46, who entered the industry two decades ago.

The plastic, rice-sized pellets he buys for local phone cases and EV battery factories jumped wildly in March, triggering days of panic that jammed the small town’s roads as factories rushed to stock up.

‘Mutual state of decline’

Exporters in Zhangmutou showed AFP a vast range of products their pellets would become, including drones and badminton birdies.

One trader sifted through pink, green and purple beads that she said would be moulded into e-cigarette casings sold in the Middle East.

The Iran war has hit plastic production even harder than bottlenecks caused by the Covid pandemic, when ships could not come and go from China, Li said.

Some sellers cashed in on the plastic panic, he added, fighting to take advantage of surging costs.

Li said the price of plastic had dropped around 10 to 20 percent from its height, but he cautioned against further oil hold-ups.

“The factories we supply to will suffer the most because their direct costs will rise,” he said.

For exporters, the Middle East crisis has added to the hangover still lingering from Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs last year.

The US Supreme Court struck down those levies as illegal, but tolls on Chinese goods entering the US still sit at around 20 percent.

On the outskirts of Guangzhou, one garment factory owner lamented the chaos triggered by the US president’s trade war.

Overseas clients are afraid to place orders, while Chinese manufacturers cannot pin down changing costs.

“As a result, everyone is in a mutual state of decline,” garment boss Zhou, 55, said.

While 80 percent of his clients have returned, the fabrics scattered on his factory floor made into sweatpants headed for Europe and North America have risen 10 to 20 percent in cost due to the Middle East war.

As overseas orders dropped, seamsters went months without a job.

‘Tensions rise, orders disappear’

Migrant worker Jingjing returned to her hometown in Hubei province for two months, where she made half the 400 yuan (US$60) she now earns in Guangzhou’s garment factories.

“When tensions rise… orders suddenly disappear,” the 42-year-old said.

But this year she said she always has something to do.

In a damp back alley, Jingjing joined job-seekers milling about leisurely, haggling for higher wages while garment bosses perched on scooters brandished hiring signs, desperate for day labourers.

Chen, the vacuum factory manager, said he was “still worried” about surging shipping costs should the Iran war drag on.

“If shipping costs rise, it will cause the final costs for our customers to increase sharply,” he said.

They “will have no way to sell normally, because the costs are just too high”.

Chen said RIMOO plans to expand to other markets beyond the Middle East where around 60 percent of its customers are based.

“We are still optimistic,” he said. “The market demand still exists.”

But analysts warn the war’s impact on costs will be felt for months.

“The problem is all of these costs will filter through the supply chains for the rest of the year,” said supply chain consultant Cameron Johnson.

“The longer it goes on, that kind of cascades into much bigger problems, particularly if there’s not enough oil in general to run stuff.”

President Donald Trump said he had made “fantastic trade deals” with China’s Xi Jinping, as the pair met on Friday at final talks of a superpower summit that according to the US leader has also reaped a Chinese offer to help open the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump had arrived in Beijing seeking to seal deals in sectors including agriculture, aviation and artificial intelligence, as well as to contain differences between the two sides in a number of tense geostrategic areas — not least the Middle East war.

Trump’s overtures to Xi, whom he described as a “great leader” and “friend”, have so far been met with more muted tones by the Chinese leader.

But the US leader said “a lot of good” has come out of the visit.

“We’ve made some fantastic trade deals, great for both countries,” he said after a walk with Xi among the rosebushes in the gardens of Zhongnanhai, a central leadership compound next to Beijing’s Forbidden City.

“We’ve settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to solve,” he added, without providing details.

Xi said it was a “milestone visit”, and that the two sides had to date established “a new bilateral relationship, which is a relationship of constructive strategic stability”.

He promised to send Trump seeds for the White House Rose Garden.

‘Help on Hormuz’

In an interview with Fox News after the first day of the summit wrapped, Trump said Xi had agreed to several US wishlist points.

On the topic of the war in Iran, the US president said Xi had effectively assured his counterpart that China was not preparing to militarily aid Tehran, which has essentially closed the Strait of Hormuz.

“He said he’s not going to give military equipment… he said that strongly,” Trump told Fox.

“He’d like to see the Hormuz Strait open, and said ‘if I can be of any help whatsoever, I would like to help,'” Trump added.

Asked whether the two leaders had discussed Iran, the Chinese foreign ministry on Friday released a statement calling for “a comprehensive and lasting ceasefire”.

“Shipping lanes should be reopened as soon as possible in response to the calls of the international community,” it added.

Taiwan policy ‘unchanged’

The warm handshakes and pomp on Thursday were somewhat overshadowed by a blunt warning from Xi on a much longer standing geopolitical flashpoint, Taiwan.

Shortly after talks started, Chinese state media reported Xi had told Trump that missteps on the sensitive issue of Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict”.

The Fox News interview did not touch upon Taiwan, and Trump did not comment to reporters when asked about the matter on Thursday.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC the president would say more “in the coming days”.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC on Thursday though that “US policy on the issue of Taiwan is unchanged… as of the meeting”.

Beijing had raised the topic, he said, but “we always make clear our position, and we move on to the other topics”.

Taipei responded Friday thanking Washington “for repeatedly expressing its support”.

Boeing, oil, soybeans

Trump did not spell out on Friday the trade agreements that he said had been sealed with China.

However, in the Fox interview, Trump said one big business deal struck involved Xi agreeing to purchase “200 big” Boeing jets.

Shares of the US aviation giant fell after Trump’s comments, in a sign the market had expected a more robust purchase from China.

The US president also said Beijing had also voiced interest in buying US oil and soybeans.

China, which is the key foreign customer of Iranian oil, bought small amounts of US oil before Trump imposed tariffs last year.

It has sharply slowed down purchases of US soybeans, turning instead to Brazil.

Bessent told CNBC that Trump and Xi were talking about setting up “guardrails” for the use of artificial intelligence.

Bessent said the world’s “two AI superpowers are going to start talking”, though US export controls on the advanced technology to China remain a sore point in relations.

A senior surveyor at a government inspection unit has admitted alerting the renovation consultant ahead of site checks at Wang Fuk Court before the estate went up in flames, a public inquiry has heard.

Victor Dawes, lead counsel to the independent committee investigating the fatal fire, questioned Andy Ku, a senior maintenance surveyor at the Housing Bureau’s Independent Checking Unit (ICU), on Wednesday.

Dawes presented to the committee Ku’s written witness statement, in which the senior surveyor said that the ICU had “no particular role in reviewing or confirming the quality, reliability, and integrity of consultants.”

The committee earlier heard in March that one of the directors of Will Power Architects, the consultancy firm overseeing the large-scale maintenance work at the Tai Po housing estate, had not carried out his duties as a “registered inspector” (RI).

“The RI’s work, in effect, is to act as a regulator. If it’s not up to you to keep them in check, who else would it be?” Dawes asked Ku.

Ku replied that the oversight system is essentially “self-regulating” and that the ICU does not have a formal auditing system.

The committee also heard on Wednesday that for most of its inspections, the ICU had notified a Will Power employee, who was also a representative for the RI. The inspector himself was not there for most of the ICU checks.

Dawes remarked that the ICU’s inspection practice deviated from the norm with other government departments, such as the Labour Department and Buildings Department.

The lead counsel also told the hearing that the ICU had conducted a total of 10 inspections at Wang Fuk Court, of which only two were held without advance notice. One of those two inspections was an impromptu check, which Ku conducted himself after a medical appointment in the same district.

“If you didn’t have a medical appointment in Tai Po that day, there wouldn’t have been an inspection?” Dawes asked. Ku agreed.

Dawes then showed the committee screenshots of ICU maintenance surveyor Amanda Lau’s text conversations scheduling an inspection with the RI representative, who then alerted the contractor, Prestige Construction & Engineering. Ku confirmed that Lau acted on his orders.

After the fire, the ICU began conducting inspections without advance notice, Ku said.

Dawes asked if the new arrangements meant that the ICU realised there were issues with its old system. Ku replied: “There was room for improvement.”

Scaffolding nets, foam boards

Ku was also grilled on his unit’s oversight of scaffolding nets and foam boards, which a preliminary investigation has blamed for contributing to the spread of the blaze.

The lead counsel brought up the ICU’s checks on the fire retardancy of scaffolding nets used at Wang Fuk Court.

He asked Ku why he told the Buildings Department the nets were up to standard, despite the ICU’s own test showing the nets continued to burn for more than 10 seconds before the flame was extinguished.

Ku said that upon two retrials of the same piece of netting, the net did not catch fire.

Dawes showed a fire retardancy certificate to the committee and asked Ku whether the ICU could verify the legitimacy of the certificate and whether it really corresponded to the same lot of scaffold nets.

Ku said the unit could not verify, as it relied on the contractor’s word.

Despite residents’ complaints, the senior surveyor told the hearing that he did not notice the estate’s windows were covered with foam boards during an ICU inspection in September because scaffolding nets were in the way.

A month later, the contractor and the inspector told Ku that only three floors would have windows covered with foam boards whenever spalling works were carried out.

Ku said he did not ask to see a fire retardancy certificate for the foam boards as he believed the phased arrangement would mitigate fire risks. “There was no basis to ask for a certificate,” he said.

Dawes scrolled through about a dozen photos from the site, most of which showed windows covered with foam boards in clear view. The photos were part of a slideshow report that Ku had previously seen.

Dawes questioned how Ku could have been unaware of the foam boards, to which the government surveyor said he was “focused on the concrete works.”

Ku added that in retrospect, he “had been lied to” and that he did not follow up on the matter because there were no further complaints from residents.

A retired Hong Kong policeman and a former UK Border Force official were convicted by a London jury Thursday of conducting “shadow policing” on British soil on behalf of China.

Ex-police superintendent Bill Yuen, 65, and Peter Wai, 38 — both dual Chinese-British nationals — were found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service under Britain’s national security laws following a weeks-long trial.

Wai, who worked for the UK’s Border Force immigration and customs enforcement agency after previously serving in the British police and the Royal Navy, was also convicted of misconduct in a public office.

He had searched the interior ministry’s computer system for people of interest to Hong Kong authorities.

The jury at London’s Old Bailey court, which deliberated for nearly 24 hours, was discharged after failing to reach verdicts on a further foreign interference charge against each defendant.

Prosecutors promptly announced they would not seek a retrial and the duo were remanded into custody ahead of sentencing on a date to be set on May 15.

The court had heard how Wai had gathered intelligence on the orders of Yuen, who was a senior manager at the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office (HKETO), which represents Hong Kong’s government in London.

Politicians, campaigners

The pair targeted Hong Kong dissidents and pro-democracy protesters living in Britain, with “special attention” also paid to politicians, including senior Conservative Iain Duncan Smith.

They undertook information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception, with one operation capturing photographs of prominent campaigner Nathan Law.

Their activities coincided with Hong Kong authorities publishing bounties of around £100,000 (US$136,000) for information helping to identify several UK-based activists, including Law, jurors heard.

Another protester told the jury of how Wai had threatened him with arrest for confronting a Hong Kong diplomat in London.

Messages on Yuen’s phone showed surveillance of Law began as early as 2021, the prosecution said as it gave evidence.

See also: ‘Your inner self is red’: UK border officer accused of ‘infiltrating’ Hong Kong pro-democracy group

The defendants’ activities were exposed in May 2024 when police foiled an alleged bid to snatch a former Hong Kong resident from her flat in the northern county of Yorkshire, the court heard.

Wai, of Staines-upon-Thames, southwest of the capital — who was known to associates as Fatboy — and Yuen, of Hackney in east London, had both denied wrongdoing.

The case comes in the wake of tens of thousands of people, including democracy activists wanted by Chinese authorities, moving to Britain since Hong Kong enacted a draconian National Security Law in mid-2020.