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Letters

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The fire at Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po, which claimed 168 lives, exposed a system in which flat owners – the people who pay for and live with the consequences of building renovation decisions – are practically powerless.
One question deserves an answer: why did it take a tragedy to force the authorities to act? Owners across Hong Kong have filed complaints about rigged tenders and suspicious contracts for years, but little happened. Yet within months of the fire, investigations were launched.
The obvious inference is that such malpractice is widespread, but extraordinarily difficult to prove. Collusion leaves few fingerprints – bids can be steered through consultant specifications, tender evaluations and proxy-stacked meetings that all look legitimate on paper.
If malpractice only surfaces after a catastrophe, enforcement is reactive. That must change. Investigations and prosecutions should be standing practice, not post-tragedy theatre.
I therefore urge the government and the Independent Commission Against Corruption to revisit complaints lodged by owners over the past 20 years concerning large-scale renovation projects.
The industry’s problems did not begin two years ago; many owners who reported suspected collusion were turned away. Those files deserve a second look.
Reform must also be structural. Owners are laypeople facing consultants, contractors and managers who run tenders for a living. Owners typically see only a glossy proposal and a recommendation, while the documents needed to scrutinise a deal are often unobtainable.
Homeowners at Wang Fuk Court did what the law allowed – questioning a roughly HK$330 million project, requisitioning a meeting, voting out their management committee – yet still could not escape the contract.
The consultation on amending the Building Management Ordinance is welcome. Four reforms deserve priority: stronger approval thresholds for large contracts, with tender documents published to all owners; a cap on proxy harvesting; mandatory declarations of interest, with false declarations criminalised; and a genuine mechanism for exiting contracts signed in questionable circumstances.
After Wang Fuk Court, this should be treated not as a routine legislative tidy-up, but as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to return control of buildings to the people who own them.
Victor Tan, Wan Chai
Zhu Rongji and the long runway
Zhu Rongji, who died last month aged 97, was 59 when he became mayor of Shanghai in 1988, the year I was born. It was the first time he had truly run anything. The premiership came a decade later.
As a child, I knew him only as the official on television who lost his temper when nobody else did. In 1998 he said he had prepared a hundred coffins: 99 for corrupt officials, one for himself.
That willingness to be disliked was earned. Orphaned by nine, Zhu graduated from Tsinghua and spent nearly 20 years in the political wilderness. He was around 50, when his old bureau chief Yuan Baohua brought him into the State Economic Commission.
What he did in that interval is the whole lesson. He had “no resentment against Heaven, no quarrel with men”, as Confucius put it. He emerged with his competence sharpened. We often offer “A vessel great, it is the slowest made” as consolation, as though the vessel forms itself while you wait. It does not. Zhu was not waiting; he was working, unwatched.
Nor did he forget who opened the door. In 2018, days before his 90th birthday, he travelled to pay respects to Yuan, then 102.
None of this is to say there was no pain. Restructuring the state sector cost tens of millions their jobs; my father lost his. But an appreciation of Zhu that omits the cost is a press release.
Zhu’s life offers no reassurance that things work out; for two decades there was no evidence his would. It might offer a job description for the interval: be good at the work while nobody is watching, refuse to blame the weather, be willing to be disliked once the work matters, and keep faith with those who kept faith with you.
He took real command at 59 and did a lifetime’s work in the 15 years that followed. For anyone counting, that’s a long runway.
Luo Chen Jun, Singapore


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Crime in Hong Kong

Bid-rigging isn’t new. Hong Kong must revisit old complaints

Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po on December 16, 2025, after a fatal blaze broke out. Why did it take a tragedy for the authorities to crack down on bid-rigging for building renovation projects? Photo: Sam Tsang

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The ICAC arrested 10 people, including the contractor, project consultants, registered inspectors and members of the owners’ corporations. Photo: Jelly Tse

Police arrested 40 people in total. Photo: Sun Yeung

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The fire at Wang Fuk Court, Hong Kong’s deadliest in decades, killed 168 people and displaced about 5,000 others last November. Photo: Karma Lo

Residents arrive at the Wang Fuk Court owners’ corporation’s extraordinary general meeting at Kai Tak Community Hall  on July 19. Photo: Edmond So

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Opinion

Readers discuss reforms to the system around building renovation projects, and a lesson from Zhu Rongji’s life


Readers discuss reforms to the system around building renovation projects, and a lesson from Zhu Rongji’s life.


Hong Kong’s Tai Po fire tragedy

Hong Kong society

Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC)

Hong Kong

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Readers discuss reforms to the system around building renovation projects, and a lesson from Zhu Rongji’s life

Readers discuss reforms to the system around building renovation projects, and a lesson from Zhu Rongji’s life