By: Hamish CHANEdited by: Simran Vaswani

The nomination period for the 2021 Legislative Council general election ended Friday with 154 candidates getting enough endorsements to run, according to official statistics.  In the December election, 20 of the 90 seats will be directly elected by geographical constituencies. The Election Committee will appoint 40 seats. The remaining 30 are elected by functional constituencies. Though the overall number of lawmakers has increased from 70 in the city’s first Legco election since Beijing’s sweeping overhaul of the system earlier this year, the number of directly elected seats, chosen by residents from 10 geographic districts, decreased from 35. Motions in the Legislative Council need two-thirds consent to be passed, according to the Basic Law. Previously, many directly elected lawmakers were from pro-democracy parties.  Most have been disqualified. “Hong Kongers’ enthusiasm for participating in politics was quenched,” Francis Chau Yin-Ming, a former legislative council member and current district councillor, said. This year’s hopeful candidates vied for nominations from the city’s Election Committee, in which most members are from pro-establishment parties. “I started from scratch. I have to work very hard to promote my political platform to the public and the election committee,” said Wong Wing-Ho, a candidate from the moderate Path of Democracy party. “But now the atmosphere of discussion in the reformed electoral system is much more rational now.” This year, every constituency will be contested for the first time. Some non-pro-establishment candidates are confident in the new system. “Fortunately, there are no swing voters. So, there is no conflict between us and pro-establishment candidates,” another candidate from Path of Democracy, Chan Chun-Hung, said. “So, I am very confident that more normal Hong Kong people can vote.”   A handful of candidates are not from the pro-establishment camp, some with previous ties to the opposition or who define themselves as moderates. “In …

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor proposed a large-scale development plan in the northern New Territories in her last policy address of this term. Creating a new town on the border with Shenzhen, the plan will develop 600 hectares of land capable of housing 2.5 million people to address the current housing shortage.  “We cannot avoid the question of how much land Hong Kong lacks, as the projected shortfall will guide our spatial development strategy,” Lam said. The plan was delivered as the government of one of the world’s least affordable real estate markets pledged to ease the housing problem under pressure from Beijing.  “There will not be much change in the short term as planning requires time,” said Yuen Wai-kee, associate professor of the department of economics and finance at Hong Kong Shue Yan University.  “What Lam puts forward now is merely an early stage conceptual layout while the actual implementation might take at least 10 years.” The plan will increase the city’s public housing, though Lam did not say by how many. According to reports released by the Hong Kong Housing Authority, the average waiting time for public housing in 2020 is about six years. For the single elderly applicants aged above 58, it is about four years.  Many waiting for public housing live in cramped subdivided flats. Currently, 209,700 people live in units averaging one fourth to one third the size of a standard flat, according to the 2016 population by-census.  in July, Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, urged Hong Kong to scrap subdivided flats and “cage homes” by 2049.  Beijing’s top representative in the city, Luo Huining, followed up by paying visits to such homes on National Day last week. Increasing land supply with more affordable houses has been a …

Tenants living in the city’s cramped subdivided flats expected help from today’s policy address but were disappointed by a lack of concrete plans. Another 5,000 transitional housing units will be made available to people waiting for public housing, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said in her fifth policy address, after announcing earlier this week that the housing shortage would be the focus of her talk to the Legislative Council. The supply is expected to increase to 20,000 in the following years.  “The policy address failed to respond to the urgent housing needs of residents who are now living in subdivided flats and cage homes,” said Sze Lai-shan, a committee member of the local advocacy group Society for Community Organization. ”The number of transitional housing units should increase to 50,000 units in five years.”  In 2021, there were 226,000 people living in around 110,000 subdivided flats, according to the Hong Kong Legislative Council. Lam also said in the policy address that the previously-announced rent control measures for subdivided flats will go into effect in January to curb landlords from increasing rent for two years. Private housing between 70 to 99.9 square meters, colloquially referred to as subdivided flats, saw rent increase 42% between 2010 and 2019, according to SoCO. “Apart from the tenancy control, the regulations on the control of starting rents of subdivided flats are not proposed in the policy address after we have already expressed our demands to the government earlier,” Sze added.  “I am disappointed this time as I often hear that the government officials uphold the slogan ‘say goodbye to subdivided flats’ but it turned out that the government was only concerned about economic development,” said Li Miaorong, who has lived in a subdivided flat in Sham Shui Po for the last three years.  The family …

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor highlighted national education in today’s policy address, saying that strengthening it is a way to cope with students who have been misled and participated in “extreme political activities”. This school year, liberal studies classes were replaced with the new subject “citizenship and social development” starting from form-4.  Lam said she would personally conduct classes for teachers of the new subject so that they may have a better grasp of the status and power of the constitution as well as the function of the chief executive under “One Country, Two Systems”. “It is hard to squeeze in time for national education elements on top of the current tightly-scheduled teaching curriculum. Giving classes for teachers would be unnecessary. Newly-joined teachers are required to take a three to six hour training course on national education,” said Ho Ho-ping, a secondary school teacher.  “Wide-ranging guidelines on national education would be confusing to teachers. There are doubts about the effectiveness of national security education,” Ho said. However, Ho said that highlighting civic education can emphasize the importance of being a law-abiding citizen for young people.  Lam said that a minority of students have been “deluded and radicalised to take part in illegal acts and even organise extreme political activities”, and called for cultivating the sense of “national identity, values and civic-mindedness.” Kevin Yeung Yun-hung, the Secretary for Education, has requested schools to formulate and implement formal plans on national security education as soon as possible. Universities are also advised to teach national education. Hong Kong Baptist University introduced a two-hour national security law education class as a graduation requirement this year.  Sami Luk, a third-year student from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that she disagrees with Lam’s comments on the “deluded and radicalized” students.  “Some …