On a sprawling promenade in West Kowloon, a gay choir lit up the stage with a chorus of harmonies. Children listened attentively at a storytelling session led by a drag queen dressed in pink from top to bottom.

Around them, dozens of tents representing LGBTQ-friendly NGOs promoted their services and ran mini games. 

These were scenes from Hong Kong’s largest LGBTQ event, Pink Dot, when it was last held in September 2024. The event attracted thousands of people, including families with young kids.

Since then, the annual outdoor carnival, which aims to celebrate diversity, has been axed for two consecutive years, including the one scheduled for this month.

The organisers announced the cancellation on May 18, around five weeks after they said Pink Dot would take place at Stanley Plaza and Murray House in mid-June, coinciding with Pride Month.

The event was also cancelled last year after the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) declined to rent its Art Park venue to the organisers, although it had done so for five years.

Pink Dot started in Singapore in 2009, and five years later, Hong Kong held its inaugural event. For the first two years – in 2014 and 2015 – the carnival was held at Tamar Park in Admiralty.

In later years, Pink Dot took place at Art Park – except during the 2019 protests and the pandemic restrictions between 2020 and 2022, when the organisers cancelled or moved the event indoors.

To hold a public event like Pink Dot, organisers must apply for a Temporary Places of Public Entertainment Licence from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD).

Brian Leung, co-director of Hong Kong’s Pink Dot, told HKFP in late May that Link REIT, the venue operator, had informed the organisers that it could not rent the site in June because it had heard of “problems” with the event’s licence application to the FEHD.

Leung said it was unclear how Link REIT heard there were “problems” with the event’s licence application. He was never aware that there was ever any problem.

“So far, I have received no official explanation,” Leung said in Cantonese. “As an organiser, I cannot guess [what happened].”

In response to HKFP’s enquiry, the FEHD said on May 21 that it received Pink Dot’s application in late April, but the event organisers told the department on May 18 that they had cancelled the event.

The applicant “said it would formally withdraw the application later, so the department does not have any follow-up,” the FEHD wrote in an email.

‘No political aims’

Pink Dot is not the only LGBTQ event that has encountered problems over the past year. The WKCDA axed a queer-themed play, We Are Gay, in October, nearly six weeks before it was set to open at the Xiqu Centre in the cultural district.

The following month, the Hong Kong Pride Committee – which used to hold the city’s Pride marches – called off an outdoor festival at Kwun Tong Promenade after the venue operator said the site was unavailable due to construction work. The last Pride march was held in 2018.

The cancellations have raised questions among LGBTQ activists about the future of holding events in Hong Kong.

“We do have concerns,” Leung said. “Does it mean that going forward, it will be very hard or impossible to find venues for events that are LGBTQ-related?”

In late July last year, Pink Dot’s organisers were forced to cancel – four weeks after the government released its proposed framework for a bill allowing same-sex partners to register their relationships. The bill was to comply with a Court of Final Appeal ruling in a lawsuit filed by LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham.

Sham, a former district councillor, told HKFP that when Pink Dot was cancelled last year, he thought it might be because the timing was sensitive, citing the government’s attempt to pass the framework.

The bill was eventually voted down in the “patriots only” Legislative Council in September, with many lawmakers citing a need to “uphold” traditional Chinese family values.

See also: ‘It is scary to be LGBTQ+ in Hong Kong’: Over 10,700 submissions received for same-sex partnership bill consultation

“But now that it’s been cancelled for a second year, people don’t have any idea why,” Sham said in Cantonese.

Leung said he brought Pink Dot from Singapore – where the event is still held every year – to Hong Kong in 2014, seeing it as a family-friendly celebration of diversity.

At the time, Hong Kong had annual Pride parades, with different themes each year, such as “Call for the law, equality for all” and “Stand up for diversity.” It was an opportunity for LGBT groups and their allies, including pro-democracy lawmakers, to rally on the city’s streets, waving rainbow flags and chanting slogans.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the organisers of the Pride march have only held indoor events.

“I thought it would be good to have an event like Pink Dot, which is different in nature. The Pride marches had clear political aims, while Pink Dot is softer, with no political aims,” Leung said.

Shrinking LGBTQ space in mainland China

Restrictions on the LGBTQ community in mainland China, where advocacy groups have been forced to disband and queer content has been censored, are not lost on Hong Kong activists and academics.

Jamie Zhao, an assistant professor and scholar on queer media at the City University of Hong Kong, said the shrinking space for LGBT activism could not be separated from mainland authorities’ lack of tolerance for publicly disruptive and “rights-demanding” activities.

The official attitude towards the LGBTQ community is closely aligned with the country’s renewed emphasis on family values, marriage and fertility, Zhao told HKFP. Amid an ageing population and low birth rates, the Chinese government has been encouraging citizens to marry and have children.

See also: ‘Boys’ Love’ dramas dance around China’s LGBTQ censors

“Queer life can be framed as non-reproductive, individualistic, foreign-influenced, or insufficiently aligned with the future of the nation,” Zhao said.

However, Zhao said mainland authorities’ approach to the LGBT community could not be described as a total crackdown. The growth in gay and lesbian bars, “boys’ love” and “girls’ love” drama series, LGBTQ reality dating shows and other elements that make up the “pink economy,” the academic said, shows that “commercially useful queer-coded culture” is still allowed to exist.

John Burns, an honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Politics and Public Administration, also said the official stance on LGBT matters in mainland China was a mixed picture.

Despite restrictions, Chinese production companies are still making new “boys’ love” dramas to meet popular demand, and they have not been shut down by authorities, Burns said.

In any case, the scholar said he did not believe the Hong Kong government was attempting to ban LGBTQ communities from gathering, or that there had been any related directive from the central government.

“I don’t think the central government is micromanaging Hong Kong on [LGBTQ] issues. I think they’re more likely to be micromanaging Hong Kong on national security issues,” Burns told HKFP.

‘Greater risk of disorder’ outdoors

Since the Beijing-imposed national security law was passed in 2020, large-scale outdoor events like marches and rallies have all but dried up. Besides political protests, the city no longer sees marches on topics like labour issues and women’s rights as it used to. 

“If the real issue is that the police are worried about national security, and people exploiting the outdoor event for something that it wasn’t designed for, then [the Hong Kong government] should say so,” Burns said.

Former lawmaker Regina Ip, who leads the government’s advisory body, the Executive Council, told HKFP that police tend to think outdoor events carry a “greater risk of disorder.”

She pointed to the Gay Games opening ceremony in 2023, which “was held at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium and went very well.”

Hong Kong co-hosted the international sporting event with Mexico in 2023, welcoming participants from around the world. However, the Gay Games in the city, which did not receive government sponsorship, saw far less participation than originally expected.

Like last year, Pink Dot organisers are looking into holding a private indoor event that will be livestreamed to the public, Leung said.

Asked whether Pink Dot would consider moving its event indoors in the future, Leung expressed concerns that they would still face problems getting an entertainment licence.

To Zhao, the visibility of the LGBT community has become “politically more vulnerable” in recent years because of its association with the non-establishment camp.

“Many openly queer or queer-associated public figures were connected directly or indirectly to pro-democracy politics, civil society, activism or critical public discourse,” she said.

Zhao referred to singer Denise Ho, who came out publicly during the Pride parade in 2012 and has spoken out about her pro-democracy stance.

Many politicians who took part in Pride parades belong to the pro-democracy camp, such as Leung Kwok-hung, also known as “Long Hair”; Raymond Chan, the first openly gay lawmaker; and Sham, one of the openly LGBTQ district councillors elected in 2019.

Leung, Kwok, Chan, and Sham were among the 47 democrats charged in a landmark national security case involving a primary election in 2020, and among the 45 who were jailed.

Zhao said: “This close association between queer culture and civil society has made queer visibility in Hong Kong more politically charged than in many mainland commercial contexts.”

‘Big loss’

Despite Pink Dot’s cancellation, some local activists are still hopeful that an LGBTQ space exists for the community to gather and celebrate diversity.

Jerome Yau, co-founder of Hong Kong Marriage Equality and chief executive of AIDS Concern, pointed to the fact that an outdoor event marking International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) went ahead over a weekend in mid-May.

On May 16 and 17, various organisations – from NGOs to an LGBTQ-friendly church and a queer advocacy media outlet – set up street booths in the heart of the Causeway Bay shopping district. The same event was held last year.

Yau acknowledged that organisers of large-scale events in Hong Kong faced “growing challenges” nowadays, but said he saw “no evidence” that Link REIT was under pressure.

“Whatever those licensing issues may be, I hope there is more clarification,” he said.

Nick Lee, a lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Gender Studies Programme, however, said he felt it was possible that the venue operator did not experience direct pressure to refuse rental to Pink Dot organisers, but withdrew on its own accord out of an abundance of caution.

Still, Yau found it disappointing that Pink Dot could not be held for a second year in a row.

The event “had a good track record. It was a good sign that Hong Kong at the very least embraces diversity and inclusion,” he said.

“It’s obviously a big loss not just to the LGBTQ community, but to the whole of society.”

The smell of smoke filled the flat as Mr and Mrs Wong brought home eight red-white-blue and IKEA bags filled with their belongings, retrieved from their old home, now charred and damaged by the fire.

Their daughter should have been overjoyed to have been reunited with her collection of storybooks, but all she could do was recoil from the smell of ash still lingering on the paperbacks six months after the fire at Wang Fuk Court last November.

The Wongs were among residents who returned to their fire-scorched flats to retrieve their belongings from mid-April to early May. On their allocated day, Wang Fuk Court residents made their way up the estate’s stairwells, racing against a three-hour time limit to retrieve what they could, reminisce in their former homes, and pay respects to the dead.

It was also a cathartic experience for some, as they struggled to pick up the pieces – literally and figuratively – in the wake of the deadly tragedy.

The inferno at the government-subsidised estate in Tai Po in November last year killed 168 people and has since displaced thousands of others. An inquiry hearing is under way to identify the cause of the fire – the city’s deadliest in decades – and hear testimony from residents, government officers, and others.

The Wong family was able to salvage some keepsakes and belongings, including the daughter’s books and birthday cards from friends, an old photo album, and a hard drive containing pictures and videos from the past decade.

“Some of the books were gifts from friends, and some of them she bought with her own pocket money. When she saw that the things in Wang Fuk Court had come back, she was so happy. But at the same time, all of those things smelled of smoke,” said Mrs Wong, who declined to disclose her full name for privacy reasons.

She recalled that her daughter, unable to withstand the stench, retreated to her room. “She said, ‘I have to hide in my room, the living room smells so bad!’”

Nearly six months after the fire, the nine-year-old girl is still reeling from the trauma. She “has become quite sensitive to certain smells and sounds, even the school bell,” Mrs Wong told HKFP in a phone interview this month.

The 38-year-old mother was worried that the smell of smoke – if it continued to linger – might bring up her daughter’s memories of the escape from the burning complex. Both she and her daughter have started seeing a psychologist to process the emotional fallout.

On the fateful day in late November, Mrs Wong was working at a local nursery when a neighbour called to tell her the estate was on fire. Her daughter and father-in-law were at home. Both Mr and Mrs Wong tried to call the grandfather multiple times, and luckily, the husband’s call went through.

The girl and her grandfather made their way down the 27 floors and exited the building through the back entrance – some 20 minutes after the fire broke out.

The Wongs are now living in a rented flat in Tai Po, the same district as their old home. Smoke from incense at a nearby traditional temple and sirens from a fire depot have also become triggers for the young girl.

For herself, Mrs Wong recovered some clothes that her mother-in-law had tailored to fit her. The family is still searching for an SD card containing 10 years’ worth of photos, including those of her daughter’s birth, hoping it will still be intact in the wreckage.

Mrs Wong told HKFP that she wept as she climbed all the way up to the 27th-floor flat at Wang Tai House, the second block at Wang Fuk Court that caught fire, earlier this month. To her surprise, their flat appeared to be largely untouched by the flames, though the intense heat from above and below her flat had mangled the ceiling and floor.

Before heading back to their old flat, she had resigned herself to the possibility that it might also be her last chance for a farewell. “What I wanted was to properly say goodbye to the flat,” Mrs Wong said.

Hong Kong authorities are set on a plan to buy out seven blocks at Wang Fuk Court for HK$6.8 billion and one tower largely unaffected by the blaze for another HK$1 billion, as well as to tear down the estate and turn it into a park or community facility.

“Every time I thought of going back, I would cry. I would worry about crying so hard that I wouldn’t have time to pack,” she said. “But I couldn’t let myself do that. I had to steel my nerves and pack up.”

Mrs Wong also brought flowers to pay her respects to her neighbour who died in the fire. “Looking at the other badly burnt units, I was reminded of all the people who left us,” she said.

Unfortunately, she did not have time to say proper goodbyes because she had to get back to packing.

The 27-storey slog up and down the building left the Wongs pressed for time. They were told to leave almost 30 minutes before their three hours were up to account for the time it would take to move all their things downstairs.

“I had hoped I would have some time to sit down and let things sink in, but I couldn’t even have that,” she said. To the family’s relief, the government has said residents will have a second chance to return to the estate. “Given a choice, I would pack up the entire place with me,” she said.

Carbon Yip, who lived in a sixth-floor flat in the neighbouring Wang Cheong House, the first block that caught fire, is planning his second trip back to the estate.

“I’ll take every single opportunity to go back,” said Yip, who spent almost three decades of his life at the estate. “The last time I was home was when I left for work that day, and now we’re back.”

Yip and his wife, Karen, moved into their flat after they got married, in the block neighbouring the tower where his childhood home was. “It wasn’t just property, it was the place where I grew up,” he said about Wang Fuk Court.

“Even if we’re done packing up, if we are allowed back, I’d still want to go back, even if it’s just to sit.”

The couple, along with his older brother and father, returned to Wang Fuk Court last month, donning hard hats and name tags. They packed up their lives at the estate into about 30-odd bags, most of which have been placed into a storage unit in a nearby industrial district.

The family first went to Carbon Yip’s home and days later to his father’s flat in Wang Tai House.

They returned to the flats weeks after the father, Yip Ka-kui, also known as Sdanni Yip, gave a moving testimony before an independent committee investigating the cause of the fire and its rapid spread.

At the hearing, Sdanni Yip, who repeatedly reported potential fire hazards at the estate to authorities, accused the government of “evading responsibility.” He also gave a heartfelt tribute to his late wife, Pak Shui-lin, who spent her final moments knocking on doors to notify other residents of the fire.

The Yip family’s designated social worker showed them photos of the flat before they returned so they would have a better idea of what to look for. However, even then, Carbon Yip couldn’t prepare himself for the weight of stepping back into his home.

“I had to collect myself before I could start packing, because the emotions were overwhelming,” he said, recalling the trip back to Wang Cheong House. “I don’t think anyone could accept seeing their home looking that way.”

Carbon Yip, 36, lost much of his Gundam and Digimon figurine collection to the fire. He discovered the models had melted and fused into a single unrecognisable lump of plastic. He had to throw out a large part of his Pokémon card collection, including limited anniversary-edition cases that warped and melted in the fire.

However, he managed to salvage a commemorative crystal block made to remember their pet dog, who died early last year after about 16 years with the family. The memento was stashed away in a box, which shielded it from the worst of the fire.

Returning home reminded him of his late mother. Pak took care of their late dog, whom she called her “granddaughter,” while he and his wife worked.

“’Your daughter isn’t eating again!’ – she used to tell me whenever [the dog] was being a picky eater,” Carbon Yip said.

Carbon Yip, his wife, and his father have moved in with the elder brother. Seven family members are crammed into a three-bedroom flat, just a 15-minute walk from Wang Fuk Court.

“Being able to get these things back, our home can now feel a little bit more complete,” Carbon Yip said.

Several times a day, a drone carrying high-capacity cameras and flashing red-and-blue lights whirs and rises from the rooftops of police stations across Hong Kong.

They emerge from a box-shaped docking system that slowly unfolds its doors to both sides. Some hover over the city’s billion-dollar villas with private pools and tennis courts; others whizz along streets bustling with people and traffic. 

Hong Kong police have been rapidly expanding their use of surveillance technology and automated drones. They have used drones to hunt down people who overstayed visas or gambled illegally.

According to the police force, these technologies will help deliver high-quality police services and optimise deployment and efficiency. Drones and cameras alike will also likely be combined with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition capabilities.

Drones will substitute some of the police’s foot patrols, and tens of thousands of surveillance cameras will be installed to assist in investigations and arrests. 

Since a drone patrol pilot scheme was rolled out in May last year, the technology has helped arrest 54 people, including at least six wanted individuals, according to police. The force did not provide complete data, but at least half of the suspects allegedly committed non-violent crimes.

In one operation last month that spanned from West Kowloon to Lantau Island, police – with the help of drones – arrested 19 people suspected of immigration infractions and prostitution. 

In another instance, police used drones to apprehend a group of eight middle-aged and elderly people who were gambling illegally in a public housing estate in Ma On Shan. Police also fined two drivers spotted crossing over into an oncoming traffic lane on a road to Shek O, using a drone. 

Police have not responded to HKFP’s request for more details on how the drones helped during those arrests and investigations. 

The increased use of drones is a response to China’s push for a “low-altitude economy,” which can be integrated into daily services ranging from deliveries to law enforcement, said Sky Yeung, chairperson of the DNT FPV Drone Association Hong Kong, China. 

Businesses such as delivery companies and government agencies can test drone-use scenarios through a regulatory exemption scheme, and the government is taking steps to prepare for more drones in the air, whether operated commercially or by authorities, Yeung said. 

So far, police have not explicitly said anything about using drones for national security purposes, which has been a priority for Hong Kong’s law enforcement in recent years.

However, as an expert told HKFP, the capability is there.

Despite the stated purpose of police technology, once the law allows for an agitator, a national security risk, or a terrorist to be prosecuted, it becomes “malleable,” said Bryce Neary, former executive editor of the Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law. The US-based lawyer studied the use of drone and surveillance technology in Hong Kong, China, and the US.

If a government “make[s] a legal argument to do so, then the technology is in place and can be utilised regardless, and as needed essentially, when the government wants to change those terms for their use,” Neary told HKFP on the phone.

Moreover, there are potential privacy issues.

To people on the ground, police drones flying between 60 and 90 metres above ground will be barely noticeable to the naked eye, Yeung said, and their buzzing noise is unlikely to cause a nuisance, given other urban noise. 

But nothing escapes the drones flying above us. Police drones, similar to those used in China, can typically “film everything” with “powerful lenses that can zoom in from a great distance, such as seeing what is inside a vehicle,” he said. 

Police drones are marked with flashing lights and reflective decals for people to identify them, but these won’t be visible at their usual operating altitude, Yeung said. “Maybe you can see a flashing dot at night, but you wouldn’t notice it.” 

When asked about privacy concerns by HKFP, the police force said its drone patrols fly over “carefully” planned routes that cover only public areas and do not involve private spaces such as building interiors.

The drones “avoid unnecessarily flying close to individuals or private premises” – unless the situation warrants an investigation, in which case the drones would descend to lower altitudes to collect evidence, police said in a statement.

Video footage with no evidential value will not be kept for more than 31 days, and those obtained as evidence will be classified as such and handled by the investigating unit, according to the police statement. 

Over the past two years, Hong Kong authorities have been introducing more surveillance technologies without hiccups at the “patriots only” legislature – and without protest.

This is in stark contrast to the time when angry demonstrators tore down experimental “smart” lampposts during the city’s 2019 protests and unrest. Discontent with shrinking political freedoms, protesters suspected that the lampposts would eventually allow authorities to conduct surveillance by adding facial recognition capabilities to their panoramic cameras. 

The government strongly denied such plans at the time, and promised the cameras would be disabled or their resolution reduced to assuage concerns. 

However, in a reversal, law enforcement is now considering adding facial recognition technology to its toolkit. Such systems may be connected to police surveillance cameras as soon as this year, police chief Joe Chow said in February. By 2028, police will install a total of 60,000 cameras across Hong Kong. 

The goal is to have “as many cameras as possible” and replicate what’s in mainland China, where there is camera coverage “every two steps,” he said during a TV interview. 

“Times have changed” compared with when society widely opposed increased surveillance and privacy issues, Chow added.

According to police, drone patrols will be used to combat crimes, identify traffic violations, and monitor traffic flows and crowds.

They can be used to track down suspicious individuals, such as someone who appears evasive when police are nearby, police said at press briefings.

They may also soon be equipped with artificial intelligence, but police have not specified whether the same facial recognition technology used on cameras would be applied to drones. 

Present technology from mainland Chinese drone surveillance vendors can identify people, objects, behaviours, and events, according to their product catalogues. They can count and identify various types of vehicles moving on a road, or people in a crowd. They can detect illegally parked cars, smoke, or objects fallen onto power lines. They can spot when protest banners are unfurled. 

Yeung pointed out drones’ ability to lock on to a target person and track them automatically as they move – a feature commonly used by police in the US. In short, drones film from above, while police operate on the ground. 

During the first phase, which began in May last year, drones were deployed to Heung Yuen Wai, a border area with mainland China, and West Kowloon.

In the second phase of the scheme, launched in January this year, police drone patrols were expanded to remote areas, where foot patrols are less frequent and which are more prone to burglaries, such as outlying islands like Lamma Island and Cheung Chau, as well as the Peak.

They also covered busy downtown districts like Central and suburban residential areas such as Yuen Long and Tsuen Wan.

The police force purchased around 700 drones for HK$25 million during the past financial year, and will purchase another 56 in 2026-27 for HK$4.8 million, the Security Bureau told the legislature.

Other agencies also deployed drones for various purposes, from detecting sites at risk of landslides to patrolling several tourist hotspots during Golden Week holidays.

Last year, investigators from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department apprehended individuals who illegally slaughtered a goat in a rural area, with the help of drones.

Several residents on Lamma Island said they were not aware of police drone patrols, despite prominent banners announcing their presence near the Yung Shue Wan ferry pier and in villages. They said they welcomed the idea that these patrols could prevent bike theft or burglaries, and expressed no worry about privacy issues. 

The island’s resident, who asked to be identified only as Mark, said he believes ultimately it is the presence of police officers that will make a difference in deterring crime, something that drones above his head cannot replace. “What you need is your bobby to be walking and to be visible,” he said. 

Neary believes a chilling effect is the intended purpose of police drones, more than the number or severity of crimes they manage to actually solve.

“Regardless if it’s actually effective in terms of what it’s doing, the fear of the fact that you’re being monitored at all times for any of these petty crimes in public or in private, I think, is going to be a big deterrent for you to do so,” he said. “And maybe that’s the point in the first place, right?” 

Hong Kong scholar Joseph Li has had to rethink the design of his courses almost every semester over the past few years, as powerful AI chatbots disrupt how teachers teach and students learn.

His discipline – an emerging academic field called “public humanities,” which integrates cultural theories with a focus on community-building – is novel enough to require constant revision of its curriculum.

But the sheer speed at which artificial intelligence has evolved since November 2022 – when OpenAI released its powerful ChatGPT, kicking off an AI frenzy – has necessitated a more radical reimagining of higher education, Li said.

For example, with AI, writing essays has become less meaningful as a form of assessment, as the technology can generate prose “within seconds,” Li, a research assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), told HKFP in an interview in April.

Now, a course needs to incorporate several grading methods, including in-class handwritten tests, to fully assess students, he said.

The point is not to ban students from using AI, as Li himself allows students to freely use the technology in some settings.

“The logic is to make all these assignments interconnected and accumulative, so that [students] cannot instantly generate something” for the sake of handing in their homework, he said in Cantonese.

Across academic disciplines, professors and lecturers in Hong Kong are rethinking their teaching and the ways they assess students’ learning outcomes. The goal is to cultivate what scholars call “AI literacy” – a responsible and constructive approach to using the emerging technology in the real world.

“When [students] graduate, it is certain that they will be exposed to AI and they will use AI,” George Ho, an associate professor of supply chain and information management at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong (HSU), told HKFP in Cantonese.

“What we need to do is to ensure they use it ethically, use it well, and acquire the necessary skills to master the technology,” Ho said.

The process is both fruitful and challenging, according to teaching academics and experts interviewed by HKFP. While generative AI has unleashed massive potential for innovative teaching and greatly accelerated students’ learning, the technology also raises questions about fairness and academic integrity.

From ban to embrace

Kelvin Wan, a digital learning specialist at HSU, recalled that when the AI boom began in late 2022, universities in Hong Kong were cautious about the technology and its implications for education.

That anxiety was demonstrated when the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the city’s oldest university, issued a temporary ban on AI tools for coursework in February 2023. HKU lifted the ban in the summer of that year and gave its teachers and students access to ChatGPT in September 2023.

Cecilia Chan, a professor of education at HKU, who leads the university’s AI in Education Lab, told media outlet The Initium in 2024 that the temporary AI ban was implemented to give school management time to acquire the hardware, software, and knowledge required to apply the nascent technology in education.

HKU has since fully embraced generative AI. In its AI policy, rolled out in the 2023-24 academic year, the university stated that “AI literacy is essential,” and that “rethinking pedagogy is most likely necessary.”

“Universities in Hong Kong were in fact watching each other at that time,” Wan told HKFP in Cantonese. “So we were pretty cautious at the beginning… But, from our perspective, we wanted to know what [AI] is.”

In May 2023, HSU organised a seminar on the pros and cons of using AI in higher education, as well as the ethical issues arising from the technology. Teachers were positive about the discussion, and the school began drafting guidelines for the use of AI for both staff and students, Wan recalled.

At HSU, the school encourages teachers to openly communicate with students about where they are allowed to use AI for assignments from the start of the semester, Wan said.

Meanwhile, the school also provides guidance for students to responsibly report their use of AI to teachers. “This hopefully will safeguard their academic integrity,” Wan said.

Ho, the supply chain professor at HSU, said his students were trained in skills to use AI, including systems thinking – the ability to break down a complex problem into solvable parts – and critical thinking – being able to evaluate the information generated by AI.

Wan called those “transferable skills,” meaning they are valid in various real-world scenarios, not just for using AI. “No matter how advanced AI becomes in the future, we as humans have to evaluate its outputs and make our own judgements,” he said.

Ultimately, students have to be responsible for their use of AI, Wan said. “AI is fundamentally a tool, and it cannot take responsibility… Whoever uses AI has the responsibility to criticise and evaluate its outputs.”

Subjects at risk

As AI takes root in classrooms, it appears to be a promising tool for teachers and students alike.

Tang Yuk-ming, a senior lecturer at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, has studied the impact of advanced information technologies on students’ learning outcomes and efficacy.

His research during the Covid-19 pandemic, when online learning was the predominant mode of higher education due to social distancing rules, found that virtual reality (VR) could improve students’ academic performance and motivation to learn.

AI chatbots can enable teachers and students to “personalise learning,” said Tang, whose research focus also includes the application of AI.

As the digital assistant is available 24 hours a day, students can get instant responses tailored to their needs. At the same time, teachers can review students’ interactions with AI to identify their weak spots for strategic intervention.

Tang’s department has developed in-house AI chatbots for students, and teachers will only use the data collected for teaching enhancement, he said, brushing off privacy concerns.

See also: AI as ‘personal therapist’: Despite risks, Hong Kong teenagers turn to chatbots for counselling

Ho shared the positive assessment of AI’s impact in his discipline of supply chain science. Thanks to AI’s assistance, what used to take a year for students to complete, such as problem-solving projects using real-world corporate data, can now be finished within a single semester.

But there has been a growing concern that, at the current rate of development, AI could shortly replace jobs and wipe out whole categories of work. STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – are considered to be at risk.

Between 2022 and 2025, entry-level jobs in Hong Kong plummeted by 60 per cent, with junior roles in administration and programming vanishing at even higher rates, government data showed last month. The city’s labour minister, Chris Sun, said these areas are vulnerable to automation and that authorities are studying the impact of AI across job markets.

Both Tang and Ho dismissed the idea that AI would replace engineering graduates in the future and said that “tedious jobs” may disappear.

“My view is that [AI] will vastly raise productivity, but there may not be as many people with the skills to use these tools to finish tasks,” Tang said.

“STEM subjects are never just about training your basic knowledge; it is about your mindset and problem-solving abilities,” he added. “People who know how to solve problems will always be needed.”

For the humanities, the idea of AI as a threat is less acute, because human-centred knowledge and human interactions – such as engaging with a community – are some things AI cannot produce on its own, Li said.

“Ultimately, what we [in the humanities field] are interested in is people’s unique experience, how it can help us make sense of ourselves and what we can do as humans.”

In contrast, he said, AI can only assist students in this process.

Challenges in higher education

While AI shows much potential for improving teaching and learning, its adoption in higher education comes with its own challenges.

Wan said that, in his experience promoting AI literacy, teachers are often more adept at picking up the technology than students. “I realised our colleagues and teachers have to use [AI] every day at work, while students stop using it at semester breaks,” he said.

He also noted that university freshmen are typically less savvy at using AI for their learning compared with more senior students. The problem, he argued, stemmed from a lack of AI-related training in the city’s secondary school curriculum.

“DSE students are not that AI-ready coming out of secondary schools, so they may struggle when they enter universities and have to use the technology,” he said. “The university should provide some support in that regard.”

Another challenge lies with ensuring fairness as the use of AI becomes ubiquitous. Universities in Hong Kong have sought to provide students with equal access to cutting-edge AI models, but, as Li observed, a minority of students choose not to use the technology for their learning.

“It may be an ethical choice. They may think they have abused water resources, or they may think AI has made them dumb,” Li said of the students.

AI critics have raised concerns about how data centres powering the technology are using millions of litres of water for cooling, depleting the resource in some communities around the world.

There have been debates about AI’s impact on the mind. While some studies suggest that the tool can improve academic performance, other research has found that relying on AI for tasks like essay writing can weaken cognitive activities in the long run – an accumulated “debt” for the brain.

Both the costs and benefits may be real. According to a study published in April, while using AI improved people’s problem-solving in the short term, it impaired their independent performance and made them more likely to give up when not assisted by the technology.

The students who opt out of using AI “may see learning as a form of self-cultivation, and they don’t want AI to interfere with that process,” Li said. “It is an important reminder to respect this group of students when we design our courses.”

As AI grows more powerful at an exponential rate, there are also worries that teachers themselves are at risk of being replaced.

While this is an “interesting” possibility, Tang said, chatbots that are always available cannot “completely” replace teachers and schools.

“Teachers are not only about teaching. They understand the students’ needs through communication, and they guide students towards addressing those needs,” he said.

“AI cannot do this alone so far.”

An engineer by day, Thomas spends most of his time inspecting building projects on construction sites. At night, he unwinds by performing in bars and restaurants across Hong Kong.

The 35-year-old has always had a passion for singing – in particular, he loves performing songs by Hins Cheung, his favourite Cantopop artist.

“When I have a gig, one-third or even half of my songs are Hins’ songs,” Thomas told HKFP. “I love how he expresses himself through singing. He’s very creative, and he’s humorous too.”

Last year, he even signed up for Hins Academy music seminars, personally taught by Cheung. They were not cheap, Thomas said, costing around HK$800 or $900 per seminar.

Cheung, 45, whose music career in Hong Kong has spanned more than two decades, was born and raised in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. He moved to Hong Kong in 2002 to pursue music.

His hits, from old-time favourites like “Tremor” to newer songs like “Imaginary Fairground,” are karaoke staples. He has also won multiple high-profile awards, and his concert tickets sell out notoriously quickly.

Last month, Cheung made headlines after he apologised for his past criticism of the government. His comments were published in a full-page interview with state-backed newspaper Wen Wei Po, in which he said he had been “impulsive” and “ignorant” in his younger years.

The out-of-the-blue repentance contrasted with the pro-democracy stance that Cheung had been associated with. While he – like most public figures in the city’s post-security law environment – has not commented on politics in recent years, his fans remember his support for social movements dating back to the anti-national education protests in 2012.

Cheung also said in the interview that he would serve as a mentor for a Security Bureau programme targeting young people arrested for their involvement in the 2019 protests and unrest. He would lead them on trips to mainland China so they could learn more about the country, he said.

Thomas – who requested to use a pseudonym due to the sensitivity of the topic – said the recent news did not change his perception of Cheung, as he did not think the statements were made of his own free will.

“This is a 180-degree difference” from what Cheung used to be, Thomas said in Cantonese. “I think there must be reasons behind the scenes.”

His reaction echoed many comments left on Cheung’s social media posts, some of which said the Wen Wei Po interview felt “bizarre” and suggested that something “had happened.”

Political pressure

A political scientist at a university in Hong Kong, who declined to be named, said he believed there was some merit in fans’ theories. Cheung’s dramatic turn showed the increasing political pressure that artists had to cave in to in order to succeed in their field, he said.

He speculated that the government wanted a popular public figure to step forward and “admit their mistakes” to encourage others to rethink their political views. Cheung was a “suitable candidate,” the academic said.

He opined that while Cheung was believed to have a pro-democracy stance, he was not as anti-establishment as other singers who have engaged in political activism.

In fact, while the Cantopop star has expressed support for the city’s social movements, he has also made posts on Weibo celebrating China’s National Day.

“He has the brand of being anti-government in some sense, but he’s not that extreme,” the scholar said. “He’s the ideal type for the government to work with.”

The apology and collaboration with the government are also beneficial for Cheung from a business perspective, the academic added. 

In the past, artists worried that anti-establishment political statements could limit their opportunities across the border. Mainland China has been known to bar singers perceived as pro-democracy, making it difficult for them to hold concerts there.

But now that fear could be felt right at home, too, the academic said. In recent years, singers who are outspoken about their pro-democracy stance have faced difficulties securing concert venues in the city. 

Outside of Cheung’s fan circle, however, criticism is not hard to come by. Lester Shum, a pro-democracy activist who was released from jail in January after serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence for a landmark national security case, said on Threads that Cheung was doing it “for the money.”

He appeared to downplay concerns that Cheung was under any pressure.

“Don’t say he’d get arrested if he didn’t do this lmao,” Shum wrote in Chinese. “I think the chances of that happening are close to zero.” 

Another Threads user accused Cheung of “playing the victim” and trying to fish for sympathy.

‘For his music’

Comments like that do not faze long-time fan Brian, who said he has been listening to Cheung since his late primary school days.

The 29-year-old said he had been to Cheung’s concerts eight or nine times, a feat made possible by the fact that he could buy internal tickets through a friend’s relative who worked at Emperor Entertainment Group, Hong Kong’s talent management behemoth that manages the artist.

Tickets are too difficult to purchase during public sales, said Brian, who declined to disclose his full name.

“I have liked him for so many years for his music, not because of things he has said about politics in the past,” Brian told HKFP. “So I won’t stop liking him because of what he’s said about politics now.”

He told HKFP he himself is not a political person and that he does not support “either side.”

“But in Hong Kong, if you say you support the government, you will have more opportunities,” he said. “If [Cheung] still wants to develop in Hong Kong, to hold shows and appear in films, his stance must be supportive of the government.”

According to local media, Cheung appeared at a Security Bureau event at the Hong Kong Museum of History at the end of April, where he and other speakers gave talks to about 300 people. The event was aimed at young people who were arrested during the protests and unrest in 2019.

The singer shared the ups and downs of his career, including being scammed by a record company in mainland China when he was 17. In his talk, he did not mention national security.

Afterwards, participants were brought to the national security exhibition in the museum. Then, there was a lucky draw, with tickets to a star-studded concert featuring Emperor Entertainment Group’s singers among the prizes, an attendee told local media.

Thomas said he did not think that Cheung wanted to collaborate with the government on its event, but perhaps he had to as a favour to his music company, which is reportedly experiencing financial difficulties. Last year, Emperor Group actress Michelle Wai also gave a talk at a similar Security Bureau event targeting former 2019 protesters.

He also said it was “abnormal” that Cheung unfollowed many accounts on Instagram around the time the Wen Wei Po interview came out, including some of his closest artist friends like Terence Lam and Tyson Yoshi.

Thomas said he believed Cheung would not do that on his own.

He added that while Cheung had not spoken about politics in recent years, his music video for “Imaginary Fairground” – filmed in London in 2023 and depicting Hongkongers’ struggle to adapt to a new life in the UK – was interpreted by fans as a message of encouragement for those who had emigrated because of the city’s political developments.

Thomas’ friends who are also Cheung fans share his continued support for the artist, the hobbyist singer said, but some members of his own audience seem less forgiving.

Thomas had come across restaurant customers at his gigs who, upon hearing him perform Cheung’s songs, said they no longer listened to the Cantopop star.

“I think those are not his real fans,” Thomas said. “All they’ve seen are the news reports.”