How fire tests China’s consciousness

From Urumqi fire to Hong Kong fire, how human tragedies test consciousness of the people, society, and systems behind them.

When talking to brands and organizations based in Hong Kong in recent years, I’ve been surprised at how separate they are from China’s digital ecosystem. Since the fire tragically broke out, I realized that it could be blessing.

From the business perspective, HK’s gradual integration with mainland China has been largely positive, which has been exemplified by the recent National Games happening in the Greater Bay Area, mainland-based companies swarming to HK for IPOs this year, and food and beverage chains from Mixue to Yuanji Dumpling taking over Hong Kong’s high streets. In an ideal world, that boosts consumption and the economy, and the more integrated they are the better.

But outside the business world, through watching how the fire in Tai Po in the New Territories unfolded, how locals and the international community react, so readily and effectively — I believe that certain extent of separation is good.

A full integration means Beijing treats Hong Kong as another Chinese city, where, when large-scale tragedies like this happen, the most important thing is to keep the ‘negative’ news and adjacent people under control.

128 people have lost their lives in HK’s Tai Po fire, and the death toll may still rise. It started on Nov. 26 at Wang Fuk Court, a high-rise compound with over 1900 units and over 4,000 people. Many may be reminded of Grenfell fire in London in 2017, which led to 72 deaths with 129 units.

For many mainland citizens who lived through COVID, a more immediate comparison is the apartment blaze in Ürümqi, which happened on November 24, 2022 under the zero-Covid policy. It killed 10 people and caused nine injuries.

If Hong Kong were more ‘integrated’ with the mainland, from survivor relief to media coverage, it would all be done in a centralized, controlled manner.

The family members would be met with local officials and often kept in a hotel with security guards, which would control where they can be and who they can talk to. In media, the tactic is described with the euphemism of “comforting”.

The Community Party’s standard SOP for news production emphasized on official announcements, so when one looks up Ürümqi fire today on mainstream channels in China, we do not see victims, we do not hear their stories, they remain forever as numbers. Out of potential paranoia, the government downplayed the fact that it happened in a Uyghur-majority compound and the victims’ identity.

Top editors at state-controlled or affiliated media outlets will be handed propaganda orders to keep reporting positive. That means instead of seeking solutions and explanations, as media is expected to, they disproportionately hype up hero stories and take a positive spin on details without context. (e.g. Today, Xinhua agency posted on Weibo: “144 people on the previous missing people list were safe.”)

Thankfully, that largely isn’t the case in Hong Kong. Over the last few days, I thought it was a blessing that Hong Kong still has a separate ecosystem that citizens can rely on.

They remain their access to platforms such as Facebook, Threads, Telegram, which enables voluntary groups to come together without being monitored like those on WeChat.

On both Chinese and Western social media, mainland users — categorized by their usage of simplified Chinese — have been awed by how HK citizens can engage in public discussions.

There has been a mirror effect: watching Hong Kong made some of them realized there are rights one can exercise as a member of a civil society, which are non-existent in mainland China.

In a Threads user’s words with thousands of likes: “This, I realised, is what a normal public sphere looks like—one that allows investigation and allows expression.”

This sentiment has come up before, also during a testy time.

A WeChat user posted the viral “10 questions for the National Health Commission” almost exactly three years ago, before Beijing lifted zero-Covid policy. Their reflection on Hong Kong was among one of the questions (this article was read over 100k times, the highest number WeChat allows to show before being taken down):

“Hong Kong — which is far more densely populated than the mainland — has never carried out mass PCR testing, and it lifted its controls months ago.

Everything in Hong Kong is functioning normally. Did its healthcare system collapse?

Why is it that Hong Kong didn’t experience a medical ‘crunch,’ yet the mainland is so worried about one? Does Hong Kong not have elderly people and children too?”

In reaction to the fire, mainland citizens are made to realize that Hong Kongers can freely discuss everything from owners’ corporations, Hong Kong politics, the public housing system. They can freely express their pain on camera and on social media. The firefighters strive to rescue every life, including cats and dogs and turtles, which was deemed “the sign of a truly civilized society.”

They find it’s precious because they know it isn’t allowed on the mainland — these human reactions are punished and capabilities are politically castrated.

The 10 deaths and 9 injured in the apartment fire in Ürümqi “have weak self-protection and self-rescue capabilities,” according to the official press briefing. We do not know how zero-Covid measures affected their escape, no mainland media dared to ask that question.

But it awakened the consciousness of people across China, and more visibly, among some in Shanghai.

On Nov. 26, 2022, people started a vigil on Urumqi Road in the former French Concession, which turned into a peaceful protest. So peaceful, that they didn’t hold up signs, only A4-sized white paper. It reads nothing but also everything: you can censor what we write, not what we believe in. Blankness triggered more paranoia than words.

I was hoping that in the coming days, HK can continue to show its civic reflexes and continue to be a role model, but I was too naive.

Today, independent HK news outlet Renews reported that one of the people who drafted a petition on change.org — demanding “ongoing support and proper resettlement for affected residents; the establishment of an independent investigation committee; a review of the construction oversight system; and full accountability for regulatory failures, including holding government officials responsible” — was taken to the police station. It was unconfirmed whether they are under arrest, but the Instagram account of the petition was down.

That’s reminiscent of the arrest of Chen Pinlin, the director of White Paper protest documentary “Urumqi Middle Road/Not A Foreign Force”, who posted the video on YouTube. He was given a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence.

Freedom of expression isn’t the only that matters, but it is often the first line of defense.

RSF’s World Press Freedom Index of Hong Kong plummeted from 18th in 2002, its debut year, to 70th in 2016 to 140th in 2025 (China is 178/180 in 2025). What’s happening behind the change in numbers are high-profile arrests of media tycoon and publisher, exodus of newsrooms and journalists, closing up of independent media, and an increasing pressure for the existing ones to stay close to the Party’s Liaison Office and tell Hong Kong stories well.

We cannot be content with what Hong Kong is now today just because it’s better than the mainland regarding civil rights. The free-er digital infrastructure doesn’t offer full protection.

Fire tests the consciousness of people, society and the system behind them. Now, I only hope the integration doesn’t move any faster. 🔚