As Hong Kong mourns the victims of its worst fire in decades , the response to the disaster reveals the ways in which the semi-autonomous city retains differences from mainland China – and how some of those differences are being eroded.

Hong Kong’s leader, John Lee, announced on Tuesday the creation of an “independent committee” to investigate the blaze, which killed 151 people at the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in Hong Kong’s New Territories.

Hong Kong has a tradition of independent, judge-led inquiries into disasters, something that would never happen in mainland China , where the judiciary is controlled by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and public discussion of tragedies is tightly controlled.

But since the crackdown after the 2019 and 2020 pro-democracy protests in Hong

See Full Page