The Young Reporter

In early 2023, 28-year-old Scarlett, not her real name, queued up to enter Thailand at the Thai-Myanmar border, clutching her passport as she waited for her turn at the checkpoint. This was not for studying abroad, but an escape for survival. She feared that staying longer would permanently strip her of the possibility of leaving legally. “If my passport were scanned at the airport, I am afraid that it would be flagged,” said Scarlett. “That’s why I chose to leave from the Thai-Myanmar border,” she said, referring to its less stringent procedures.  When she stepped up to the counter, the officer flipped through her red passport and looked at her briefly. “Okay, next,” said the immigration officer.  He waved her through without running the passport through a scanner. Scarlett exited the gate and dared not slow down until she reached Thailand. Since the 2021 military coup, Myanmar’s passport system has increasingly functioned as a tool of exit control rather than merely a document for international travel. According to a 2025 report by the Danish Immigration Service, Myanmar authorities have circulated files of blacklisted people to airports and border checkpoints, allowing immigration officers to identify individuals and bar them from leaving the country with a passport scan. Those barred from leaving include participants in the Civil Disobedience Movement — a nationwide non-violent protest campaign that started in February 2021, in which civil servants went on strike in protest of military rule following the coup. More than 417,000 civil servants had joined the movement, according to an official brief from the National Unity Government of Myanmar. The movement was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Scarlett was one of them. Before the 2021 movement, she worked as a doctor at a public hospital. After the military seized power, she joined …

  Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po proposed a tax regime augmentation, aiming to attract more family offices, which manage money for ultra wealthy individuals. “Tax regime coverage will expand the scope of funds to specific ‘funds-of-one’, as well as classifying digital assets, precious metals, and specific commodities as investments with tax concession eligibility,” said Chan. Chan added the changes will take effect from the year of assessment 2025/26.  A family office is a private wealth management company established by ultra-high-net-worth individuals, responsible for the day-to-day management of family assets. According to Chan Ho-lim, Under Secretary for the Treasury Bureau, single family offices generally refer to institutions established by a single family for wealth, family affairs, and long-term equity investment management. Multi-family offices, on the other hand, are licensed companies that “serve more than one high-net-worth family” by providing outsourced services and are “typically established and run as commercial ventures”.  There are 3,384 single family offices in Hong Kong, according to research from Deloitte. According to Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, this is a 25% increase from 2023. Half of the current offices are serving families with more than US$51 million of accumulated wealth.  Since 2023, the Hong Kong government has issued a policy statement supporting the development of a global ecosystem for family offices and asset owners, promoting the growth of the industry. The bureau also said a single office contributes approximately HK$12.6 billion annually to the local economy through operating expenses alone, directly creating over 10,000 full-time professional positions, covering high-value-added fields such as financial advisors, legal and accounting. Yu Ann, 36, Co-Founder of Jadewell Family, a multi-family office,  said, compared with banks and securities firms that have a single perspective, family offices can provide a comprehensive view and risk analysis across banks and even platforms, …

Hong Kong will continue to develop the harbourfront to attract tourists, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po announced in the budget speech on Wednesday, while also giving the Tourism Board HK$1.6 billion. With the opening of a waterfront site in Hung Hom by next month, the Kowloon promenade will be extended to 15 kilometers, Chan said. The government will also consider a new pedestrian harbourfront walkway in Kennedy Town. According to data from the Hong Kong Tourism Board, the number of visitors to Hong Kong in January reached 7.23 million, an increase of 9.6%, with overseas visitors increasing by 16.4%.  The West Kowloon Cultural District on the harbour attracts many tourists. Eddie Massonique, a 25-year-old tourist from France, said he came to M+ recommended by friends, but what attracted him the most to West Kowloon was the seaside scenery. Anastashiia Armoldova, 32, a tourist from Ukraine, said she found the West Kowloon area by accident. “I think the Hong Kong government should strengthen publicity, such as advertising at the airport, to let more tourists and citizens know about this place,” she added. “My friends and I came here specifically to watch the sunset. The environment is very comfortable, and the scenery is good,” a local 14-year-old student, Ebbie Wong said. “But the transportation is not very convenient, and there are too few dining options; we have to walk far to buy food.” The Artpark in the district hosts many restaurants, but most are more expensive than local neighborhood cafes.  Two 21-year-old students from Guangzhou, Wesly Peng and Gu Chuqi, said that this area is crowded.  “We're looking for a restaurant, but the restaurants here are clearly very busy, with long queues,” said Peng. Gu said the government could add some minibus routes between Austin Station and the West Kowloon Cultural District …

In a sunlit activity room of the Cheung Sha Wan Special Child Care Centre, young children are drawing with a therapist’s help. Nearby, another repeats words prompted by a speech therapist. These simple moments are government-subsidised intensive rehabilitation training for children with disabilities. Cherry Lee, 41, waited nearly two years for her daughter with moderate autism to access such a facility and receive intensive training. “It would have been better if my daughter could have entered the centre sooner,” she said. “At the very least, she could have had an earlier opportunity to develop essential self-care skills.” Hong Kong’s 52 government-funded Special Child Care Centres provide full-day centre-based care and cognitive training, speech, occupational and physiotherapy programmes for children with moderate to severe disabilities aged 2 to 6 before they enter primary school. Lee’s two-year wait is far from an isolated case. According to the Social Welfare Department, the average waiting time for the centres is 19.1 months in 2024. Experts and NGOs say that this wait means a delay in development for special needs children, while families are burdened with extra costs and stress in taking care of children. The government added 64 centre quotas for a total of 2,580 places in 2025, with 513 children on the waiting list, according to the Social Welfare Department. “The supply of places cannot keep up with the speed of increasing demand; it is not enough for those special needs children,” a representative from Hong Chi Association, an NGO operating three Special Child Care Centres, confirmed. “This is the core reason for the long wait.” Lee’s daughter, Sakina Muk, was placed in a centre run by NGO Heep Hong Society when she was 5 in August 2025, meaning she only has about a year she can use the service. “Even with early …

The Hong Kong government will inject another $500 million into the Chinese Medicine Development Fund to promote research, training and international publicity, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po announced in the budget speech today, as the government continues to promote Chinese medicine in the city. Cheung King-ho, an associate professor in Chinese Medicine from Hong Kong Baptist University, said the Chinese Medicine Development Fund financially supported research and promotion, rather than focusing on developing basic scientific knowledge as in the past. As the only Chinese Medicine school in Hong Kong, HKBU regularly gets awarded money from the fund. “Our school has been collaborating with large scientific organizations, such as Microsoft and NVIDIA, assisting in the process of drug selection with artificial intelligence for industry development,” Cheung said.  Chinese medicine students can train in western medical centres as part of the government’s plan to integrate Chinese and western medical practices, announced by the government in February.   Chung Yan-ching, 21, a local Chinese medicine student said, “We hope to be included and be trusted in the medical system with government’s policy support.” Most bachelor degree students in Chinese medicine at HKBU, the city’s only school for Traditional Chinese Medicine,are local students, with less than one-tenth overseas or mainland students, said Cheung. “Training Chinese medicine professionals in Hong Kong has served as a transitional process of acquiring knowledge from the longer historical development on the mainland from different lineages, appearing as a supplement and extension of industry,” Cheung said. As the mainland system is more mature, local students are required to do an internship in Guangzhou, Cheung added.   A mainland PhD student in Chinese medicine from HKBU, Yang Hanhang, 26, said that fewer mainland students come to Hong Kong to study traditional Chinese medicine because there are already many famous traditional Chinese medicine universities …

North of Lantau Island, waves crashed against coastal rocks. In February 2024, a team from Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden discovered a white, crumbly solid — the first Eurasian otter feces recorded there in half a century.  Back at the lab, Aiko Leong Kwok-yi, a 30-year-old conservation staff at the Fauna Conservation Department under the KFBG, handled the sample for DNA testing, leaning in to sniff its scent. “Otter faeces do not smell foul, they smell salty like dried salted fish. When fresh, it smells like tea, jasmine tea, not stinky at all,” Leong said. The discovery on Lantau Island has ignited a fragile hope for Eurasian otters clinging to survival in the city. With only seven individuals remaining, primarily in the Mai Po and Inner Deep Bay Wetlands, the otters are at extremely high risk of extinction. In response, KFBG, the only local team dedicated to otter conservation, launched a two-and-a-half-year Eurasian otters research project on Dec. 1 this year. The project received HK$2.2 million funding from the Civil Engineering and Development Department. The study will deepen understanding of the  distribution and status of otters, identify habitats and threats of it within Lantau Island, beginning with the collection of feces samples. Leong, who joined the team in 2020 and now leads the project, set her sights on animal research after reading about legendary conservationist Jane Goodall at the age of 11. “Jane Goodall’s story just hit me that there are people who can work with animals every day. I found my life’s purpose at that moment,” Leong said. “From that day on, I've been heading straight in this way, never turning any corners,” Leong added. The path has been physically demanding. During early fieldwork, she navigated slippery coastal rocks, once nearly falling into the sea.  “I asked myself, why …

Ah Moon, 55, who does not want to reveal her real name, initially had no intention of making decisions about legal safeguards for herself and her same-sex partner related to end-of-life matters. She began to consider these issues more consciously during a hospital stay in 2002, while she was in a relationship with her ex-girlfriend. “I was afraid of what would happen if I never woke up again, so I drafted a few pages of plans on blank paper myself after discharge,” she said. Hong Kong does not legally recognise same-sex marriages. Ah Moon said because her family does not care about her relationship, she worries that her wishes after death will not be honoured.  In September, the Legislative Council rejected a bill to legally recognise same-sex partnerships by a large majority, leaving same-sex couples to rely on fragmented legal documents and personal requests to protect end-of-life decisions such as inheritance, medical choices and funeral arrangements. Rufina Ng, a senior associate at Hastings & Co, a law firm that offers free legal consultation for the LGBTQ community, said same-sex partners are highly recommended to plan in advance for end-of-life, though they still face limitations. Ng said the most common end-of-life legal challenges faced by same-sex couples in Hong Kong are claiming the body and inheritance, particularly if there is no will or there is conflict between the surviving partner and the deceased’s family. “Same-sex couples lack the legal status of spouses or family members under Hong Kong’s legal framework. When one partner dies without a will, the surviving one currently has no inheritance rights and other relatives may also oppose their handling of funeral arrangements,” she said. Hong Kong’s current inheritance laws only recognise spouses and a few other relatives. Unmarried partners, whether same-sex or not, receive no legal protection. …

LGBTQ Christians are one of Hong Kong’s marginalised groups with no official record of their numbers.  There are about 1 million Christians in Hong Kong. A survey shows that among 1,433 LGBTQ respondents, 441 showed symptoms of depression. TYR spoke to three LGBTQ Christians and an expert in Christian studies to uncover the internal identity pressure and verbal insults they experienced in Hong Kong. Reported by Laura LOU Zhengzheng, Stephen Feng Zhenpeng, Cindy Xie Xinni Edited by Henry Li Yinheng

In a sunlit activity room of the Cheung Sha Wan Special Child Care Centre, young children are drawing with a therapist’s help. Nearby, another repeats words prompted by a speech therapist. These simple moments are government-subsidised intensive rehabilitation training for children with disabilities. Cherry Lee, 41, waited nearly two years for her daughter with moderate autism to access such a facility and receive intensive training. “It would have been better if my daughter could have entered the centre sooner,” she said. “At the very least, she could have had an earlier opportunity to develop essential self-care skills.” Hong Kong’s 52 government-funded Special Child Care Centres provide full-day centre-based care and cognitive training, speech, occupational and physiotherapy programmes for children with moderate to severe disabilities aged 2 to 6 before they enter primary school. Lee’s two-year wait is far from an isolated case. According to the Social Welfare Department, the average waiting time for the centres is 19.1 months in 2024. Experts and NGOs say that this wait means a delay in development for special needs children, while families are burdened with extra costs and stress in taking care of children. The government added 64 centre quotas for a total of 2,580 places in 2025, with 513 children on the waiting list, according to the Social Welfare Department. “The supply of places cannot keep up with the speed of increasing demand; it is not enough for those special needs children,” a representative from Hong Chi Association, an NGO operating three Special Child Care Centres, confirmed. “This is the core reason for the long wait.” Lee’s daughter, Sakina Muk, was placed in a centre run by NGO Heep Hong Society when she was 5 in August 2025, meaning she only has about a year she can use the service. “Even with early …