By Tim Pit Hok-yau

Last month, the Office of the Ombudsman released its long-awaited investigation into the Hong Kong government’s work in combating animal cruelty.

The report was prompted by a series of horrifying abuse cases which, in the Ombudsman’s own words, “amount to a deliberate trampling on the dignity of life and run wholly contrary to the very conscience of a civilised society.”

The investigation focuses primarily on the failures of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD), which is responsible for animal management and welfare.

Among the key findings are the AFCD’s inefficient investigations and insufficient prosecutions. Out of 1,633 reports of suspected animal cruelty from 2020 to June 2025, only six prosecutions were brought – a striking, though not new, statistic.

The AFCD responded to the Ombudsman, saying that the majority of reports it received pertained to noise or nuisance complaints rather than cruelty. However, media reports on animal cruelty, including a recent shocking case of a 14-year-old student sharing online photos and videos of cat abuse, may suggest otherwise. 

Other problems highlighted by the Ombudsman’s report include weak enforcement powers; inconsistent case handling; poor internal monitoring and staff training; delayed reform of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Ordinance (Cap. 169), first promised in 2019; and alarmingly low penalties for illegal animal traps, which currently carry a maximum fine of HK$50,000 with no provision for imprisonment.

These are important findings, and the Ombudsman deserves credit for highlighting institutional deficiencies that animal advocates have raised for years. 

But while the report has identified some of the government’s major failures, it also reveals a deeper problem: Hong Kong’s approach to animal welfare remains fundamentally reactive rather than preventive, with most suggestions focusing on punishment, not prevention.

Worse still, the report overlooks many of the structural and everyday forms of animal plight that are normalised across the city. This article, then, intends to address these blind spots.

Duty of care

The most glaring limitation of the investigative report concerns its ambivalence over nudging the government to implement a “duty of care.”

While the Ombudsman acknowledges that the government has struggled to reach consensus on this proposal, it stops short of urging its adoption. This hesitation matters.

A duty of care would fundamentally shift existing animal law from punishing cruelty after suffering occurs to preventing suffering in the first place. Without such a framework, Hong Kong continues to operate on an outdated logic: authorities intervene only after visible injury, starvation, or death.

If a cat falls from an unprotected high-rise window, or a dog is chronically confined in a tiny flat with little exercise or social contact, the current legal framework can hardly intervene until obvious harm has already occurred.

With a duty of care, caregivers would be legally required to provide appropriate food, shelter, veterinary care, and living conditions that meet animals’ physical and behavioural needs safely. In other common law jurisdictions, including the UK and Australia, duty of care provisions have already become a cornerstone of animal protection.  

Undoubtedly, one of the report’s recommendations is to “further strengthen outreach and education in schools, helping students and young people build an awareness of animal protection from childhood.”

This is a fantastic recommendation for preventing animal cruelty, but it remains frustratingly vague. What kind of education are we talking about?

If Hong Kong genuinely wants to cultivate respect for animals, it must first confront contradictions in the current education system.

Attending a local secondary school, I still remember many science classes where animal dissection was presented as a normal part of learning, from dissecting ox eyes to hearing classmates describe experiments on mice.

These activities are still recommended by the Education Bureau’s Biology Curriculum and Assessment Guide, although the government also expects secondary school students to “learn about how humans can live in harmony with animals and show respect for all living things” in the very same subject.

Humane education

Not only do such laboratory practices risk reinforcing a worldview in which animals exist primarily as instruments for human use, but the pedagogical value of animal dissection has been convincingly challenged by a large corpus of research.

Yet, the issue is perhaps just one of the many voids in our education system that should help enhance animal well-being and stop the everyday exploitation of animals. Learning about veganism, the intersection between animal exploitation and other social problems, conservation, and other elements of animal education are equally important.

Humane education should equip citizens with the ability to locate the many practices of cruelty against animals in Hong Kong, many of which the Ombudsman’s report says nothing about. 

For instance, there have been repeated controversies surrounding captive animals at Ocean Park; animal deaths at the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens; and the racing industry operated by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, where horses routinely suffer injuries and fatalities caused by running at maximal speed, lax whipping rules, and a hot climate.

Of course, the development projects and human activities that disrupt animals’ habitats should not be ignored. Just think of how Chinese white dolphins have lost their habitat because of reclamation or been injured because of high-speed ferries’ propeller blades, to name just one example.

Whether one supports these institutions and projects or not, it is difficult to argue that they fall outside the conversation on animal welfare.

The government’s poor animal management policies in urban areas are another major omission in the Ombudsman’s investigation. The report rightly condemns illegal animal traps but ignores government-led practices that also cause suffering, including the wild boar culling operations.

It also neglects ineffective regulation of religious animal release practices, which often disrupt ecosystems and harm the very animals being “saved” because more often than not, they are not released into suitable habitats. 

If Hong Kong truly wants to become a “civilised” city that respects life, then animal welfare cannot be confined to criminal prosecutions of isolated abuse cases. It must also confront the legal, educational, economic, and cultural systems that normalise animal suffering in everyday life and prevent it from happening in the first place.

Another step that must be taken to safeguard animals’ well-being is to ask a harder question: What kinds of relationships do we, as a city, continue to build with the animals who live among us?

As philosopher Martha Nussbaum reminds us, animal justice should not be measured simply by the absence of cruelty, but by whether animals can actualise the capabilities essential to their flourishing.

For dogs, that includes play, movement, and social bonding. For dolphins, it means the ability to hunt, communicate, and live within their natural habitat. Survival alone is not welfare; a decent life is.

The Ombudsman’s report is an important step. But it should not be mistaken for an ultimate solution. Rather, it should remind us that there is always more that we – as policymakers, educators, and citizens – must do.

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Tim Pit Hok-yau is research lead for the Hong Kong Animal Law and Protection Organisation.

HKFP is an impartial platform & does not necessarily share the views of opinion writers or advertisers. HKFP presents a diversity of views & regularly invites figures across the political spectrum to write for us. Press freedom is guaranteed under the Basic Law, security law, Bill of Rights and Chinese constitution. Opinion pieces aim to constructively point out errors or defects in the government, law or policies, or aim to suggest ideas or alterations via legal means without an intention of hatred, discontent or hostility against the authorities or other communities.

By Steven Chan

Hong Kong attempts to position itself as Asia’s innovation hub, and the numbers look impressive.

According to market data, the city hosts 47 data centres with a total IT load of 581 megawatts. Another 671 megawatts worth of facilities are already in planning or under construction.

Yet behind the gleaming servers and promised economic gains lies a sobering reality: our data centres are becoming one of the territory’s largest electricity consumers and carbon emitters, and current energy conservation policy is dangerously out of date.

Hong Kong’s data centres consumed 7,131 terajoules of electricity in 2023 – up by more than 75 per cent in just five years.

If we take the Environment and Ecology Bureau’s data as a reference, greenhouse gas emissions from data centres through electricity use rose by 35.6 per cent, from 680,164 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent in 2018 to 922,392 tonnes in 2023. That is equivalent to the annual emissions of roughly 200,000 Hong Kong residents.

The forthcoming Sandy Ridge data centre – a 220-megawatt facility on an 11.6-hectare site in the Northern Metropolis – makes the scale impossible to ignore.

Even assuming a conservative 70 per cent utilisation rate and a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.3, annual electricity demand will reach 1.75 billion kilowatt-hours. Not only is this more than the MTR’s 1.67 billion kilowatt-hours in 2024 and roughly 3.8 per cent of Hong Kong’s entire electricity consumption, but it will also eclipse Hong Kong’s current largest single electricity user.

Its electricity demand is so large that four I-Park waste-to-energy incinerators could barely power it. Its carbon footprint alone, using CLP’s 2024 grid factor of 0.38 kg CO₂-equivalent per kilowatt-hour, will be 666,520 tonnes – 2 per cent of the city’s total emissions in 2023.

Yet the policy framework governing this surge remains stuck in the past. The Energy Saving Plan 2015-2025+ has expired and never addressed data centres at all. The Green Data Centres Practice Guide, commissioned by the Digital Policy Office, is still in its 2020 version. It only discusses traditional air- and water-cooling, ignoring liquid-cooling technologies now standard elsewhere.

Last year, the government amended the Buildings Energy Efficiency Ordinance (Cap. 610) to mandate energy audits and public disclosure for data centres every five years – a welcome step.

But when we asked the Digital Policy Office for the government’s own data centre performance data, the reply was a curt refusal, citing “security reasons.” If the government itself will not lead by example, why should the private sector?

Contrast this vacuum with international practice. In mainland China, all new data centres must achieve a PUE no higher than 1.25. Beijing ties renewable-energy quotas directly to PUE performance and publishes a national “Green Data Centre” honour roll.

Germany’s Energy Efficiency Act sets a PUE cap of 1.2 for new facilities from July 2026 and 1.3 for all facilities by 2030, plus mandatory waste-heat reuse. Ireland demands 80 per cent renewable energy for new centres. Singapore’s carbon tax is recycled into green-transition subsidies.

The European Union requires mandatory reporting of electricity, water and carbon data. Hong Kong, by comparison, is coasting.

This matters because Hong Kong’s energy decarbonisation strategy relies almost entirely on cleaning the grid – replacing coal with natural gas and importing nuclear and renewables.

Ireland offers a cautionary tale: even though its grid emissions intensity fell more than half over a decade, data centre electricity demand rose nearly fivefold, driving a near-doubling of sector emissions. 

Hong Kong risks the same trap. The Sandy Ridge, the Lok Ma Chau Loop and the San Tin projects will push demand sharply higher. Without demand-side controls, every tonne of grid decarbonisation will be cancelled out.

The solutions are straightforward and proven. First, the government should immediately update the expired Energy Saving Plan and the Green Data Centres Guide with legally binding PUE targets and incentives for liquid cooling and waste-heat recovery. 

Second, the Digital Policy Office must publish its own data centre energy performance – or at least explain how “security” is being balanced against energy conservation and transparency. 

Third, Hong Kong should develop local green-finance standards referencing China’s national benchmarks and international best practice, unlocking concessional loans and green bonds for retrofits.

Fourth, power-demand management must sit alongside grid decarbonisation in every future energy plan.

Hong Kong wants to be the region’s technology leader. True leadership means showing the world that cutting-edge computing and genuine climate responsibility can coexist.

The data centre explosion is not a distant problem; it is already reshaping our carbon ledger and may jeopardise our commitment to carbon neutrality. 

The policy gaps are clear and require an immediate response, as Sandy Ridge will come into operation in 42 months. It is time for the government to move from aspiration to action — before one industry’s growth becomes everyone’s environmental burden.

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Steven Chan is the assistant environmental affairs manager at The Green Earth, a Hong Kong-based environmental charity.

HKFP is an impartial platform & does not necessarily share the views of opinion writers or advertisers. HKFP presents a diversity of views & regularly invites figures across the political spectrum to write for us. Press freedom is guaranteed under the Basic Law, security law, Bill of Rights and Chinese constitution. Opinion pieces aim to constructively point out errors or defects in the government, law or policies, or aim to suggest ideas or alterations via legal means without an intention of hatred, discontent or hostility against the authorities or other communities.

By John Nguyet Erni

Two US jury verdicts against Meta and YouTube last month crystallise, but do not resolve, the promises and contradictions of our legal commitments to both freedom of expression and the protection of children online.

The US verdicts resonate in Hong Kong, which follows international human rights standards, yet our public conversations about platforms often oscillate between moral panic and technological fatalism. We do not ask hard, unsettling questions.

In Los Angeles, jurors awarded US$6 million (HK$47 million) to a young woman, Kaley, who began using social media at six. She argued that Instagram and YouTube designed addictive features – infinite scroll, autoplay, constant nudges to stay online – that harmed her. She hated her body and thought about hurting herself.

In New Mexico, another jury fined Meta US$375 million (HK$2.9 billion) for failing to keep children safe from predators, violating consumer protection laws.

These are not censorship cases; instead, the platform itself was dangerous, more like tobacco or opioid producers than publishers. 

Australia chose a different path, banning social media for those under 16. Spain, Denmark, France, Malaysia and Indonesia are also considering age-based bans. The world is grappling with legal solutions.

Predictably, Big Tech cries foul, claiming violations of free speech. However, many laws protect expression while allowing proportionate restrictions to protect others’ rights.

These include Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which applies to Hong Kong through the Basic Law and the Hong Kong Bill of Rights.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), ratified by China, goes further, requiring primary consideration of the “best interests of the child” and protecting them from “all forms of… mental violence.” 

While Australia and others keep youths off social media, US juries ask a different question: If social media companies’ design choices fuel anxiety, self-harm and exposure to exploitation, are they still neutral conduits of speech? Or do they carry specific duties of care?

Too often, large platforms hide behind free-speech arguments to avoid liability, whereas children using them have no say. Some worry that holding platforms accountable will chill speech, but the status quo already chills the speech and spirit of the young. These platforms track children, measure them, and nudge them for profit, shaping their values, desires, identities, and speech.

Unregulated design can create its own chilling effect – not by censoring, but by moulding youths’ online world and their habits of mind. They compare themselves with others online and imagine who they might become. 

The juries saw that these companies know far more than their users about these risks. So, these juries shifted responsibility away from supposedly “weak” or “irresponsible” youths to the firms that profit from their pain.

For Hong Kong, it is tempting to read these cases as a morality tale about “Big Tech finally being punished.” Or to long for a simple answer like bans.

But there is a harder question. We often worry about online lies and threats to social harmony, so appeals to “protection,” especially of children, can slide into arguments to control everyone’s speech. 

Why do our policy instincts gravitate toward regulating what we say – through content takedowns, offences and tighter control – rather than governing how platforms are designed and how their business models operate? Why do we rely on schools and parents to fix these problems created by Big Tech’s recommendation algorithms, engagement metrics and data-driven profiling?  Rather than manage political risk and public opinion, how do we genuinely centre children’s rights and voices?

The law does not ask us to choose between Article 19 and the CRC. Instead, it asks harder questions: Can we pass laws that target platforms’ amplification engines rather than opinions? Can we change the defaults rather than individual choices? Can we change profit structures rather than rely on teenage “self-discipline”? Can we see children as people with rights, not just victims of a toxic digital environment or future workers needing digital skills?

The juries in Los Angeles and New Mexico did not solve these dilemmas, but they made it harder to believe a comforting lie: that we can celebrate free speech, outsource our sociality to commercial platforms, and still keep our promise to protect our young.

The real challenge for Hong Kong is whether we will ask the difficult questions now – about Big Tech’s power, our own regulatory choices, and the rights of children as real people, not just as symbols – before our courts, or our children, force those questions upon us.

John Nguyet Erni is a chair professor and former dean of humanities at The Education University of Hong Kong

HKFP is an impartial platform & does not necessarily share the views of opinion writers or advertisers. HKFP presents a diversity of views & regularly invites figures across the political spectrum to write for us. Press freedom is guaranteed under the Basic Law, security law, Bill of Rights and Chinese constitution. Opinion pieces aim to constructively point out errors or defects in the government, law or policies, or aim to suggest ideas or alterations via legal means without an intention of hatred, discontent or hostility against the authorities or other communities.

By Billy Wong

Last summer, our organisation, the Hong Kong Committee on Children’s Rights, hosted a forum titled “I Have Something to Say,” providing a platform for those aged 10 to 17 to voice their thoughts. Topics were unrestricted, as long as they were child-related and lawful.

The very first issue raised was: “Hong Kong needs to establish a Children’s Day to raise public awareness of children’s rights.”

The young boys who raised the issue were sixth graders who, at the time, would be heading off to different secondary schools after the summer break.

They made a demand on behalf of all children in Hong Kong. One of them said, “Adults often use holidays like Valentine’s Day and Christmas to organise fun celebrations. Why is there so little promotion for Children’s Day?”

There is no universally agreed date for Children’s Day around the world.

In mainland China, June 1 is designated as Children’s Day, giving students under 14 a day off from school. Celebrations include large-scale group performances, school fairs, gift-giving, and parent-child activities. Taiwan’s Children’s Day falls on April 4, which is a national holiday. It features a host of fun, family-friendly activities and sporting events.

Both Japan and South Korea celebrate Children’s Day on May 5 – a public holiday. In Japan, carp streamers are hung, symbolising courage and growth, while in South Korea, there are large-scale events across the country.

In contrast, Children’s Day is usually just another day in the classroom for students in Hong Kong, though some schools and NGOs choose to celebrate it on either April 4 or June 1.

The kids at our forum were not speaking solely from a self-interested perspective. They argued that establishing a Children’s Day would be a concrete implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into force in Hong Kong in 1994.

They pointed out that “many countries use Children’s Day to host legal awareness campaigns, promote the prohibition of child labour, improve educational resources, organise visits to parliaments to learn about democratic systems… and so on.”

The young boys weren’t just clamouring for playtime. They had done their homework. I silently marvelled.

Whether it’s April 4, May 5, June 1, or November 20 – the last being World Children’s Day, marking the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959 and of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 – Hong Kong should formally designate Children’s Day as an official holiday, joining its East Asian counterparts.

The boys conducted a survey at their primary school in Tin Shui Wai and found that only half of their schoolmates knew about Children’s Day.

“Today’s children face academic pressure and excessive use of electronic devices, leading to a year-on-year rise in mental health issues such as depression and anxiety,” they said.

“Official Children’s Day celebrations can provide dedicated relaxation opportunities for children, such as schools organising fun activities and families arranging parent-child interactions, helping children reduce stress and cultivate positive emotions,” they suggested.

“Children’s Day should also draw society’s attention to the circumstances of vulnerable children (such as those living in poverty, with disabilities, or experiencing abuse), mobilising donations, providing resources, and fostering empathy for their situations.”

‘Crucial opportunity’

Holidays need not be merely dazzling celebrations. As the boys said, “It’s a crucial opportunity for society to examine children’s rights and invest in the future. Its significance extends far beyond a single holiday – from individual growth to societal progress – requiring joint efforts from governments, families, and educators.”

Shouldn’t we adults feel ashamed of ourselves? Why has Hong Kong never placed Children’s Day on the agenda for discussion as a school holiday, public holiday, or statutory holiday? Or has society grown accustomed to treating “children” as mere decoration, where they appear only as embellishments and photo opportunities at festive occasions?

On many critical issues – even those directly affecting children, such as school lunch programmes, school governance, or the recently enacted Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse Ordinance – society uses “age and maturity” as an excuse to exclude children’s voices, completely violating the Convention on the Rights of the Child’s principle of child participation.

Children have already voiced their evidence-based and heartfelt appeal. The ball is now in our court to show that they mean more to us than mere decorative value in our marketing campaigns. 

I believe the Hong Kong government and the Commission on Children will welcome this vision and lead the way in seriously considering the establishment of a holiday dedicated to Hong Kong’s 970,000 children under the age of 18.

Ultimately, by listening to children’s voices, we can build a culture that recognises them as individuals and as a distinct group, and learn to engage with their rights, rather than resist them. In doing so, we can set an example and help cultivate a generation of responsible and reflective decision-makers.

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Billy Wong is the executive secretary of the Hong Kong Committee on Children’s Rights.

HKFP is an impartial platform & does not necessarily share the views of opinion writers or advertisers. HKFP presents a diversity of views & regularly invites figures across the political spectrum to write for us. Press freedom is guaranteed under the Basic Law, security law, Bill of Rights and Chinese constitution. Opinion pieces aim to constructively point out errors or defects in the government, law or policies, or aim to suggest ideas or alterations via legal means without an intention of hatred, discontent or hostility against the authorities or other communities.