Three people who were arrested by national security police over alleged illegal weapons training last December have been charged with conspiracy to commit subversion.

Students Wong Kit-lun, 20, and Tang Ngai-pok, 23, as well as waiter Chan Hiu-chun, 23, appeared at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Thursday.

They are among a group of 10 people arrested in December for alleged “unlawful drilling” – an offence under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.

They stood in the defendant dock beside Gallian Pang and Lee Chun-sum, who were charged with the same offence of conspiring to subvert state power – an offence under the Beijing-imposed national security law – a week after the arrests. At the time they were charged in December, both Pang and Lee were security guards aged 24 and 25 respectively.

On Thursday, the prosecution accused Wong, Tang and Chan of conspiring with Pang, Lee and “other persons unknown between November 1, 2024 to December 11, 2025 to organise, plan, commit or participate in acts to subvert the state power.”

Wong faced an additional charge of possession of child pornography, an offence under the Prevention of Child Pornography Ordinance.

The prosecution also announced that it was charging Lee for allegedly possessing explosives and radio communications apparatus without a licence.

Possession of explosives is punishable by a maximum of 14 years’ imprisonment, while possession of radio communications apparatus without a licence is punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment.

In a statement published on Thursday, the government said the December arrests were made after investigation revealed a “syndicate” that “conducted firearms drills, knife techniques, and martial arts combat in a unit of an industrial building in Kowloon.”

Their aim was to subvert state power by means or threat of force, “i.e., to overthrow [Hong Kong’s] organs of power,” the government said.

The arrests marked the first time authorities had invoked the unlawful drilling offence.

The remaining arrestees in the case who were not charged have been released on bail. They are required to report to the police in mid-June, the statement added.

Conspiring to commit subversion, an offence under the national security law, is punishable by up to life imprisonment in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong police took away seven people in Causeway Bay, where past public commemorations for China’s 1989 Tiananmen crackdown were once held, on Thursday, the 37th anniversary of the event.

Police said late on Thursday that five men and two women, aged 17 to 79, were stopped by officers on suspicion of “disrupting order” near Great George Street and East Point Road in Causeway Bay.

They were taken away from the scene for further investigation and were released later, according to police.

“The police force will act according to threats to national security, public safety, and public order,” they added.

Activists and members of the public defied a heavy police deployment at and around Victoria Park, the former site of the city’s annual Tiananmen vigils, as they showed up in Causeway Bay on Thursday to mark the 1989 crackdown.

In Pictures: Activists stopped near ex-vigil site amid large police deployment on Tiananmen crackdown anniversary

Chan Po-ying, chairperson of the now-defunct League of Social Democrats, a pro-democracy party, arrived in Causeway Bay holding a yellow paper flower. She was quickly told by police at the scene to put away the flower and was later taken away in a police vehicle.

A young man in a black T-shirt was intercepted by police after he put on a blindfold and used a red marker pen to write on his arm outside the Sogo department store at around 7.15pm.

The man was driven away in a police van. He was also taken away from Victoria Park by law enforcement during the Tiananmen crackdown anniversaries over the past two years.

HKFP saw two other men taken away in a police van: a man holding a candle and another man sitting cross-legged on the ground outside the Sogo department store.

Police also took away a woman gesturing “six” and “four” with her hands, local media reported.

For the fourth consecutive year, on the day of the crackdown anniversary, a patriotic food carnival was being held in Victoria Park, at the same spot where hundreds of thousands of people attended the Tiananmen vigils. The carnival will run until Sunday.

Some people walked around the park to remember the crackdown and the past vigils. A 70-year-old man surnamed Tin told HKFP it was a “pity” that Hong Kong has lost its tolerance for public commemoration on June 4 – the date of the 1989 crackdown.

Compared with previous years, police officers appeared more relaxed on Thursday, patrolling the park and its vicinity in smaller groups and conducting fewer searches than before.

The Tiananmen crackdown occurred on June 4, 1989, ending months of student-led demonstrations in China. It is estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when the People’s Liberation Army cracked down on protesters in Beijing.

Leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the group that organised the vigils for decades, are standing trial for “inciting subversion” under the national security law. They face up to 10 years behind bars if convicted.

A verdict is expected in July.

Hong Kong authorities have deployed powerful machines known as “water-pumping dragons” to clear flooding after the city’s northern territories were hit by heavy rainfall overnight.

The Drainage Services Department said on social media early on Thursday that its teams had cleared seven instances of flooding in the northern part of the New Territories using the devices, which authorities procured from mainland China last year due to more frequent extreme downpours.

The Observatory issued the red rainstorm warning at 2.40am due to heavy rain in the city’s border areas near Shenzhen, especially in Sheung Shui, Ta Kwu Ling, and Sha Tau Kok. A special landslide warning was also issued.

The rainstorm signal was downgraded to amber at 5.15am and eventually cancelled at 9.30am. The weather services warned of the risk of river flooding.

The heavy rain was associated with “upper-air disturbances… persistently affecting the vicinity of the Pearl River Estuary,” the Observatory said on Thursday.

“Locally, more than 50 millimetres of rainfall were recorded over widespread areas this morning, and rainfall even exceeded 100 millimetres over many parts of the New Territories,” it added.

The flooding was concentrated in Sheung Shui and Fanling, while the Shek Kong Airfield Road was also affected, according to the Drainage Services Department.

An emergency control centre was activated at 9.45pm on Wednesday, and 90 response teams were deployed to inspect and clear flooding, the department said.

Images and videos of severe flooding went viral on social media platforms. Clips posted on Threads show floodwater entering a bus in Ping Che and a taxi trapped on the road.

Last year, after the city hoisted the black rainstorm warning four times within a week, a former Observatory official warned that extreme weather would become more frequent due to the climate crisis.

A Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil activist standing in a national security trial has urged the court to safeguard the “dignity and bottom line of the law,” as she warned judges not to become “accomplices” in an alleged government crackdown on free speech.

Chow Hang-tung, a former leader of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, said that authorities have been “reshaping” the city’s long-held values by prosecuting activists who advocate for democracy in China.

Her statement to the court was made on Tuesday as the prosecution and the defence completed their closing arguments. The three-judge panel said they hope to deliver a verdict in “mid or late July.”

Chow is representing herself in the trial, in which she faces a charge of inciting subversion under the Beijing-imposed national security law alongside the Alliance and Lee Cheuk-yan, another former leader of the group. The offence carries a maximum penalty of 10 years behind bars.

Prosecutors accuse the Alliance of inciting others to topple the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through its calls to “end one-party rule” in China, a key tenet of the group since its founding in 1989 after the Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing.

Delivering closing arguments on Tuesday, Chow said the crux of the case was whether the law protects the “perpetual rule” of the CCP or the rights of people to advocate democracy.

“Ending one-party rule means putting an end to the status quo, in which those in power are not bound by the law,” she said in Cantonese.

‘Unheard of’

Prosecutors previously argued that the Alliance’s calls breached China’s constitution, after a 2018 amendment stipulated that the CCP’s leadership is the “defining feature” of the country’s “fundamental” socialist system.

Chow argued on Tuesday that the CCP’s leadership is merely “symbolic” under China’s constitution, as the text has not demarcated the party’s power and function.

“King Charles III is also the leader of his country, but he has no real power,” she said, drawing an analogy to the UK’s constitutional monarchy.

Instead, it is a reality that the CCP is in power, she said. The Alliance’s advocacy aimed at creating “favourable conditions” for the country’s democratisation, not toppling the regime, she added.

She argued it was “unheard of” that a government would accuse its citizens of breaching the constitution.

“Any document that can be called a constitution in the world is to restrict the operation of power, not ordinary people,” she said.

Citing the trial of former South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan, who was responsible for the country’s bloody crackdown of the Gwangju uprising in 1980, Chow said it was those who sought to concentrate power that were ruled to have breached the constitution.

‘Accomplice’

She also dismissed the prosecution’s claim that the only “reasonable and natural effect” of the Alliance’s calls was an incitement of others. Her group was merely making political criticism and had not called for action, she said.

She argued that the charge against her demonstrated the government’s “paranoia” and its attempt to silence those making unfavourable opinions, adding that the defendants wholly believed in their advocacy.

If the court found the defendants guilty, that would prohibit the political freedom that the city has long championed, she said.

“If the court cannot rigorously draw a line for what is the reasonable and natural effect [of political speech], it will easily become an accomplice in the authorities’ crime,” she said. “What is on trial is actually the law itself.”

Senior counsel Priscilia Lam, representing the Alliance, argued the prosecution had not been able to present evidence of the group’s alleged incitement to subversion.

“What did the Alliance do to incite people to subvert state power?” Lam said in Cantonese. “I have heard nothing on this after sitting here for so long.”

For decades, the Alliance organised vigils at Victoria Park to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing, when hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed as troops dispersed pro-democracy demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square.

The Alliance disbanded in 2021 after authorities banned the vigil for two years, citing Covid-19 restrictions, and arrested its leadership on national security allegations. Chow and Lee have been behind bars since September 2021.

Another defendant, former lawmaker Albert Ho, pleaded guilty when the trial opened in January.

An Australian man has been remanded after allegedly dining at five-star hotels in Hong Kong without paying, just a day after being fined HK$3,000 over similar charges.

Samuel Anthony Monkivitch, 50, appeared at Eastern Magistrates’ Courts on Friday. He was charged with making off without payment and criminal damage between April 24 and May 5, local media reported.

Monkivitch, a lawyer, is accused of not paying restaurant bills at Cafe Too at the Island Shangri-La in Admiralty, Cafe Kool at the Kowloon Shangri-La in Tsim Sha Tsui, and two other restaurants – one in Central and another in Wan Chai.

His bill at the four places totalled around HK$2,039, the court heard.

The criminal damage offences relate to allegations that on May 4, he destroyed a sales terminal at the Island Shangri-La and damaged a person’s iPhone outside the Hong Kong Museum of History in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Magistrate Tobias Cheng denied Monkivitch bail and adjourned the case to June 5. Monkivitch will attend a bail hearing on May 15.

Previously, on Thursday, the lawyer was fined HK$3,000 for two counts of making off without payment and one count of common assault. He pleaded guilty to the offences the same day, local media reported.

Monkivitch was accused of dashing off after spending HK$639.10 at a Chiu Chow restaurant in Times Square, a mall in Causeway Bay, on March 23. A restaurant staff member chased Monkivitch and said he had not paid, attracting the attention of a bystander surnamed Chen, who pointed a camera at him.

The lawyer got into an altercation with the bystander and said to him, “Do you want your head smashed in?”

Monkivitch was also accused of leaving before paying a bill of HK$586 at Footaholic, a massage parlour in Wan Chai, on March 25.

A deadly blaze engulfed seven residential towers at Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po on November 26, 2025, killing 168 people. The names of the victims were released on June 10, 2026 by the judiciary, and are listed below as they appeared in a court document.

Activists have shown up in Causeway Bay, defying a heavy police deployment at and around the former site of Hong Kong’s commemorative Tiananmen crackdown vigils.

Large numbers of uniformed and plainclothes officers were seen in Victoria Park – where the Tiananmen vigils were held for decades – and around Causeway Bay on Thursday, the 37th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown.

A “Sabertooth” police armoured vehicle was spotted in the afternoon near Times Square, as officers set up a roadblock at the intersection of East Point Road and Great George Road.

Exits from Causeway Bay MTR Station were also guarded by officers.

Explainer: What to know about Hong Kong’s past Tiananmen commemorations and nat. security trial of vigil leaders

The Tiananmen crackdown occurred on June 4, 1989, ending months of student-led demonstrations in China. It is estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when the People’s Liberation Army cracked down on protesters in Beijing.

At around 5pm, activist Lui Yuk-lin walked from Great George Street in Causeway Bay towards Victoria Park. She pressed her hands, wrapped in a black cloth, in a prayer gesture, while chanting the Great Compassion Mantra.

Bowing every few steps, Lui walked through the park towards Tin Hau and returned to Causeway Bay. The activist said she bowed 37 times in the 40-minute walk.

Some police officers followed the activist and occasionally held a cordon around her as she walked and chanted.

Lui told reporters that she would be leaving Causeway Bay at 8pm to comply with a police warning. “I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” she said, before police officers swarmed her and escorted her to the MTR station.

Another woman was seen gesturing “six” and “four” with her hands at around 6pm on Great George Street in Causeway Bay, The Collective reported. Police officers at the scene warned her that her behaviour could be “seditious”. They pressed her hands down and took her away in a police vehicle.

At around 6.30pm, Chan Po-ying, chairperson of the now-defunct League of Social Democrats, a pro-democracy party, appeared in Causeway Bay with a yellow paper flower.

Police at the scene warned Chan that her behaviour might constitute “disorder in public places” and told her to put the flower in her bag.

Officers then took her away in a police vehicle.

A man was surrounded by police officers on Paterson Street after being spotted holding a candle at around 7pm.

While being searched, he asked whether he was being arrested and said that he did not have to comply with their orders if he was not under arrest. “I know my rights,” he said.

After he asked again whether he was under arrest, an officer said, “Disorderly conduct,” and they escorted him into a police van.

A young man in a black T-shirt was intercepted by police after he put on a blindfold and used a red marker pen to write on his arm outside the Sogo department store at around 7.15pm.

Despite being surrounded by police, he continued the act until he was ordered to stop. Moments later, he was taken into a police vehicle.

Before he got into the van, he pulled out a small red book that appeared to be China’s constitution.

The same man was spotted in Causeway Bay on the past two Tiananmen crackdown anniversaries and was taken away by police on both occasions.

In 2025, he appeared at Victoria Park, wearing a T-shirt saying, “Core Values of Socialism.” In 2024, he showed up at the patriotic food carnival wearing a T-shirt bearing the iconic picture of revolutionary leader Che Guevara. He was escorted away by the carnival’s security guards and later taken into a police vehicle.

A man in a white T-shirt was taken into a police vehicle at around 8pm after sitting cross-legged on the ground outside the Sogo department store.

A 70-year-old man, who gave only his surname, Tin, told HKFP that he came to Victoria Park this year to commemorate the crackdown alone, calling it a “pity” that the annual vigils were no more.

The vigils “showed Hong Kong’s freedoms, that we could speak our opinions freely,” Tin said as he walked around the perimeter of Victoria Park’s football pitches. The site, where the vigils were once held before Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020, is currently hosting a five-day patriotic food carnival.

“Now this freedom has been restricted, and no one dares to say anything critical across society,” he added.

Tin noted that police presence at the park on Thursday was less heavy-handed than in previous years, when police told him to turn off his phone torch.

But he also said fewer and fewer people had shown up in Victoria Park on June 4, expressing concern that the public memory of the crackdown may wane in the future.

E-commerce shop As One, operated by former district councillor Derek Chu, continued to distribute candles this year on June 4. Meanwhile, Hunter Bookstore, run by ex-district councillor Leticia Wong, sold candles at HK$6.4 each.

Pastor Grace Bok of the One Body of Christ Church said she and a group of friends decided to come to Victoria Park for a “walk” at around 10pm.

Bok said that while many feared the heavy police presence in the area, coming to walk around the former vigil venue should be permitted as a form of commemoration.

“It is your own activity, your own way to remember,” she told HKFP in Cantonese. “People should be allowed to remember.”

As night fell, the mood at Victoria Park appeared festive, with music pouring out of the patriotic Hometown Market Carnival.

For the fourth consecutive year, the food carnival is being held in Victoria Park in the week of the crackdown anniversary.

Police officers patrolled the perimeter of the park in small groups, while two robodogs dressed in lion dance costumes and a humanoid robot walked around the market.

While the police presence remained heavy inside and around Victoria Park this year, officers appeared more tolerant of commemorative acts.

They patrolled in smaller groups than in previous years and did not search as many people as before.

At around 9pm, several reporters interviewed a man who was drawing with a few cans of Kronenbourg 1664 beer beside him. The police’s media liaison officers asked journalists not to block the way, but did not interrupt the interview or the man drawing.

Vigil leaders under trial

Leaders of the group that organised the vigils for decades are now standing trial for “inciting subversion” under the national security law. They face up to 10 years behind bars if convicted.

Rights group Amnesty International on Thursday urged the Hong Kong government to release the vigil activists, Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, ahead of their verdict, which is expected in July.

The group said a global petition with over 52,000 signatures had been handed over to the Hong Kong government, urging the immediate release of the pair.

“This is the seventh year Hong Kong’s Victoria Park candlelight vigil has been extinguished by the authorities. But it cannot be extinguished worldwide. From Hong Kong to diaspora communities worldwide, people continue to keep the memory of 4 June alive with creativity and resilience,” said Fernando Cheung, a former Hong Kong lawmaker and now a spokesperson of Amnesty International Hong Kong Overseas.

In Beijing, authorities reportedly prevented the families of victims who died in 1989 from visiting their graves at Wan’an Cemetery, a move Amnesty International called “a heartless act.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that “no amount of censorship can erase the past,” according to AFP.

Beijing said on Thursday that Rubio’s remarks “distort historical facts, smear China’s political system and development path, and interfere in China’s internal affairs.”

On Wednesday, Hong Kong performance artist Sanmu Chan was stopped and searched by plainclothes police after showing up in Causeway Bay holding a 6.4-metre-long red string ahead of the Tiananmen crackdown anniversary.

Another artist, Chan Mei-tung, was also searched and escorted to leave Causeway Bay by police after she appeared with balloons – one shaped like a golden question mark – at the shopping district on Wednesday night.

A Malaysia Airlines flight burst a tyre on Monday after aborting take-off at Hong Kong International Airport due to “technical issues,” but no injuries were reported.

The Airport Authority (AA) said the tyre burst occurred at around 9.18am on Monday.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH79, bound for Kuala Lumpur, aborted taking off from the airport’s South Runway due to “technical issues,” the AA said.

“During deceleration, a tyre burst, and the aircraft veered off the runway and came to a stop on the taxiway.”

Following established procedures, the authority said, it arranged for a tow truck to remove the aircraft from the taxiway. “No injuries were reported,” it added.

Malaysia Airlines confirmed that the plane “discontinued take-off following a tyre-related issue.”

“The aircraft was safely brought to a stop in accordance with standard operating procedures. All passengers and crew are safe,” the company told HKFP in an emailed reply.

Photos circulating on social media show the burst tyre and several fire engines standing by next to the aircraft. One photo posted to Facebook shows an airport personnel member checking the burst tyre.

MH79 was originally scheduled to depart at 8.45am and arrive in Kuala Lumpur at 12.45pm. Flight-tracking site Flightradar24 shows that MH79 did not take off and returned to the ramp at the airport.

Malaysia Airlines said it “deeply regrets” the incident and that it was working on rebooking passengers on alternative flights or carriers.

Following the incident, the airport’s South Runway was closed for a routine inspection, the AA said. “Meanwhile, other flights used the Centre Runway for take-off and airport operations were largely normal.”

The South Runway reopened shortly after 10am on Monday, the authority added.

When Austin Bell first visited Hong Kong in 2017, he was struck by the chromatic vibrancy of its public basketball courts. Coming from the U.S., where these surfaces are often the neutral and uninteresting textures of asphalt and other materials, he was compelled to document the range of vivid color combinations, especially within the context of high-rise neighborhoods and urban infrastructure.

Bell set out to capture 2,549 outdoor basketball courts around Hong Kong—every single one there is in the region. The resulting series, SHOOTING HOOPS, not only highlights the physical courts but conveys a unique portrait of the region and the spaces where people can mingle. “To me, basketball courts are one of the most interesting subjects for aerial photography because they look so different from above than the ground,” Bell tells Colossal. “Their flatness and geometric design become an almost extraterrestrial tableau—like concrete crop
circles.”

For such a densely populated place, Bell’s images are often devoid of people, giving the colorful scenes a subtle ghostly feel. Looking closely, though, you can often see passersby out and about, illustrating the abiding popularity of these urban recreation parks. “One of the newest ones is at a playground called Chung Sing, which is so named for the sound a bell makes, so the designers stylized the surrounding area with audio waveforms,” Bell says.

Bell captured the photos in 2019, trawling Google Maps’ satellite imagery and using his drone to explore spaces between buildings and trees. Over the course of 140 days of shooting during multiple visits, he took more than 40,000 photos. He often photographed from dawn to dusk, and it wasn’t unusual for him to shoot upwards of 100 courts in a day. Once, he meticulously planned a route and captured a mind-boggling 475 courts in a single day.

“The insane became mundane,” Bell says in a statement. “I had become an obsessive completist, unable to rest until I found every court in the city. My obsession was fueled by two desires: to show an unseen perspective of Hong Kong and to fully explore a city that I feel so captivated by.”

Find more on Bell’s Instagram, and purchase the photo book from his webshop.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Austin Bell Chronicles Every Single One of Hong Kong’s 2,549 Basketball Courts appeared first on Colossal.

A transgender alum has sued her former secondary school over “discriminatory” policies that barred her from having long hair.

Oscar Fung, who studied at Lung Kung World Federation School Limited (LKWFSL) Lau Wong Fat Secondary School in Tai Kok Tsui from 2019 to 2025, filed a writ in the District Court on Thursday, local media reported.

According to the writ, Fung experienced gender dysphoria at the age of 14 when her parents separated.

During the Lunar New Year holiday in 2024, Fung decided to grow out her hair. However, she was reprimanded at school after the break because her hair exceeded the length permitted for male students and was accused of violating school rules.

The writ stated that Fung was scolded by two teachers for almost 30 minutes one day, with the teacher threatening to withdraw her from science competitions she was representing the school in.

Fung felt embarrassed and angry as other students witnessed the scene. She was then sent to the disciplinary teacher, who accused her of “cosplaying as a girl” and told her to cut her hair.

The writ also mentioned that Fung had filed a complaint with the Equal Opportunities Commission, but it was dismissed.

‘Injury to feelings’

Fung alleged in the writ that the school had breached the Sex Discrimination Ordinance, as female students were allowed to grow long hair while male students were not.

She asked the court to declare the school’s rules discriminatory and to order it to pay damages for “injury to feelings,” a term under the ordinance.

The writ also stated that one of the school’s vice principals, Pang King-fai, had twice dismissed the Sex Discrimination Ordinance.

During a meeting with Fung before the 2023-24 school year ended, Pang said the school was not subject to the Sex Discrimination Ordinance.

The second instance was during a ceremony on the first day of school for the 2024-25 academic year in September 2024. Pang told pupils publicly that male students’ hairstyles did not fall under the ordinance, and any challenges would be handled through disciplinary measures.

According to the writ, another vice principal, Li Wing-yee, told Fung that if she did not abide by the school’s rules, she should change schools.

A hearing for the case has been scheduled for July 15, according to the Judiciary’s website.

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.”

A Hong Kong court has upheld the conviction and sentence of a journalist and former head of a press union for obstructing police while reporting.

Veteran journalist Ronson Chan began serving his five-day sentence on Friday after Deputy High Court Judge Lily Wong upheld a lower court’s conviction over an incident in September 2022, when Chan refused to show his ID card to a police officer while reporting on a homeowners’ meeting.

In her written judgment, which was not read out in court on Friday, Wong shot down Chan’s argument that the police officer’s demand was unlawful and found that the journalist had obstructed the police by wilfully delaying the presentation of his identification.

According to case details, Chan was covering the meeting at MacPherson Stadium in Mong Kok, where he was stopped by a plainclothes police officer who said he was acting “suspiciously” and asked to see his identification card.

He was arrested on suspicion of obstructing a police officer after allegedly failing to comply with demands to produce his ID card despite multiple warnings.

At trial, Chan said that he refused to present his identification due to privacy concerns, referring to an incident during the 2019 protests when a police officer showed his ID card in front of his camera, which was live-streamed to thousands of viewers.

The West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts found Chan guilty in September 2023, a year after he was arrested.

The trial judge, Leung Ka-kie, said Chan deliberately stopped the police officer from carrying out her duties and that his persistent questioning of officers when they asked for his identification was “reckless and unreasonable.”

‘Social climate’

Noting online calls to protest at the homeowners’ meeting, Judge Wong also concurred with the trial judge’s ruling that the police officers were justified in their actions to maintain public order.

“As the Magistrate ruled… given the social climate at the time, observing the rules and maintaining order in public places in Hong Kong was both important and commendable,” Judge Wong wrote.

Chan repeatedly questioned the officers and ignored warnings to calm down, and only offered an opaque cardholder, which constituted wilful obstruction, the judge added.

Chan’s barrister, Steven Kwan, told the court that he would seek a certificate from the appellate court to take the journalist’s appeal to the city’s apex court, but did not submit a bail application.

With the certificate, Chan would be able to seek permission for a final chance to appeal his conviction and sentence.

Reactions from press groups

Chan, who was elected as chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) in June 2021, stepped down at the end of his term in June 2024, citing increasing pressure against him and the press union.

In a statement issued on Friday, the HKJA expressed “deep regret” over the court’s decision and raised concerns about the ruling’s impact on journalists’ work.

“Citing the exercise of constitutionally protected fundamental rights as grounds for a search is legally untenable, and today’s ruling failed to directly address this contradiction,” the HKJA said.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Friday that it “is outraged by the imprisonment of Ronson Chan.”

“The verdict sets a dangerous precedent, effectively giving the police a free hand and further eroding already dismantled press freedoms,” said Aleksandra Bielakowska, advocacy manager of RSF Asia Pacific.