By Gong Zhiping
When a public tragedy exposes regulatory failure, what people watch for is not rhetoric but consequence: Who is held to account, how quickly the system corrects itself, and whether the promised fixes are real or merely performative.
That is the context in which Hong Kong's Chief Executive John Lee, on 29 October, released the findings of an independent commission of inquiry into the Wang Fuk Estate fire. He offered a public apology, senior officials bowed to the victims and the community, and the Secretary for Housing, Winnie Ho, resigned. The government framed its follow-up as "three lines of accountability" at once—criminal liability where laws may have been broken, administrative accountability for official dereliction, and political responsibility at the level of leadership. It also announced a set of reforms across multiple policy areas, including a tougher approach to bid-rigging, changes to the regulatory setup, and the creation of a dedicated building-maintenance support body.
No reform package can undo the harm already suffered. But a tragedy can be a hinge moment—either another episode that fades into cynicism or a turning point that produces better institutions. The real test is whether the proposed changes are implemented with focus, discipline, and staying power.
Accountability is not the endpoint; it is the beginning.
A government's first responsibility after a disaster is to look directly at what went wrong, not to dilute blame or hide behind process. The commission's inquiry—running for months, with extensive hearings, witness testimony, and the review of a vast documentary record—concluded that the incident revealed deep structural weaknesses rather than a single isolated lapse. The administration's response was to acknowledge those weaknesses publicly and trigger internal investigations under the existing civil-service framework while also pursuing possible criminal wrongdoing in the private sector.
Some critics treat accountability as a body count: how many resignations, how many punishments, and how many headlines. That view is emotionally understandable but administratively crude. Modern governance distinguishes among different kinds of responsibility because different kinds of failure require different remedies. Criminal liability is about proving offenses under law. Administrative accountability concerns professional duty and disciplinary rules. Political responsibility is ultimately a judgment about leadership and confidence. Collapsing these categories into one simplistic scorecard may satisfy the appetite for outrage, but it does not strengthen the state's capacity to prevent recurrence.
If anything, the more "boring" approach—separating the tracks, following the procedures, and showing the public what is happening on each track—is often the more serious one. It makes accountability legible, enforceable, and harder to evade.
"Thorough reform" means redesigning incentives, not just punishing scapegoats.
The government has pointed to the inquiry's recommendations as the basis for a broad reform agenda in building maintenance: workflows, oversight mechanisms, public support, and complaint handling. The direction is to move away from crisis-driven fixes and toward prevention that is routine, institutionalized, and measurable.
The most politically charged element is bid-rigging in building works—an old complaint that flourishes where ordinary residents lack the information and bargaining power to police complex contracts, and where oversight is fragmented across departments with partial mandates. In such an environment, bad actors do not need sophisticated corruption to win; they only need to exploit gaps between agencies, procedural inertia, and the fatigue of owner-occupiers who cannot treat procurement as a second job.
That is why a purely case-by-case approach rarely changes outcomes. If the incentive structure stays intact, enforcement becomes a revolving door. A credible reform program has to sever the profit chain that makes collusion worthwhile, raise the probability of detection, and reduce the dependence of residents on intermediaries they cannot effectively supervise.
Criminalising bid-rigging—moving beyond a framework that relies heavily on civil remedies—signals a shift in posture: from "we will correct the market" to "we will treat coordinated cheating as a serious public wrong." The government has also highlighted early joint enforcement action by a new task force, presented as evidence that coordination is no longer just a slogan. Whether these steps become a sustained pattern is the question that matters.
Compassion on the ground, credibility in the long run
A disaster also tests the state's capacity for immediate, human-scale administration: emergency payments, temporary housing, relocation support, case-by-case follow-up, and the countless practical decisions that determine whether affected families experience the government as present or absent. The administration says it has provided a package of relief measures, created an assistance fund, arranged interim accommodation, and offered multiple options for residents' longer-term arrangements, coupled with social-work support designed to avoid leaving households to navigate the system alone.
These measures do not substitute for reform, but they are part of legitimacy. A government that promises prevention while mishandling relief will struggle to persuade the public that it can do the harder work of institutional redesign. Competence in the immediate aftermath and competence in long-term reform reinforce each other; failure in either corrodes trust.
The hard part starts after the headlines
The real work now lies in delivery: turning announcements into statutes, statutes into enforcement, and enforcement into deterrence; reorganizing oversight without creating new bureaucratic blind spots; building data systems that improve transparency rather than simply collecting paperwork; and creating support bodies that help owners' corporations make decisions without becoming another layer of unaccountable middle management.
This stage is where reform efforts often stall—not because the diagnosis is wrong, but because the political and administrative costs of follow-through are higher than expected. Vested interests adapt. Public attention moves on. Agencies defend turf. The easiest outcome is a partial implementation that looks busy while leaving core incentives untouched.
If the administration wants this episode to become a genuine turning point, it should publish clear milestones, timelines, and metrics: how bid-rigging cases will be identified and prosecuted; how interdepartmental coordination will be sustained; how residents will be supported to procure works safely; and how progress will be audited and reported. Accountability must remain visible not just at the moment of apology but in the months and years when attention fades.
Governments do not earn credibility by claiming sincerity. They earn it by making reform routine and irreversible—so that the next tragedy is less likely, and the public can see, in concrete institutional terms, what has changed.
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