Eight mainland Chinese residents were arrested over the past week for working illegally in Hong Kong, including providing services as tour guides, and helping locals buy food, groceries and daily necessities on the other side of the border. Immigration Department deputy commander Leung Tsz-chung said on Tuesday that the arrests, which took place from January 13 till Monday, involved officers posing as customers and reaching out to suspected illegal service providers through social media. “Our team had been closely monitoring social media platforms and identified a group of suspicious service providers from the mainland offering illegal cross-border services, including ‘reverse purchasing’ and acting as tour guides,” Leung said. He explained that reverse purchasing involved mainland individuals being hired by Hongkongers to buy food, groceries and other daily necessities at stores, supermarkets and restaurants across the border, and then physically carrying them back to the city for a fee. Illegal tour...

Hong Kong is set for cold and dry weather ahead of the Year of the Snake, with temperatures expected to drop to as low as 11 degrees Celsius next Tuesday, the city’s meteorological agency has forecast. A fresh to strong easterly airstream would affect the coast of Guangdong in the next couple of days and it would be cloudier, the Observatory said on Monday. “A cold front is expected to move across the coast of southern China on Sunday. The associated intense winter monsoon will affect the region in the following couple of days,” it said. “The weather will become cold and very dry.” The Observatory’s nine-day forecast shows the weather remaining largely stable from Tuesday to Saturday. Minimum temperatures will gradually rise from 16 degrees to 18 degrees over the period. Maximum temperatures will range between 20 degrees and 22 degrees. “With the easterly airstream moderating slightly in the...

Hong Kong-based investors are the largest foreign buyers of homes in the UK, but additional education fees, a new tax scheme and slowing growth in rental rates could conspire to turn people away from the country. As of December 5, Hong Kong investors had registered 25,972 property titles in the UK, up 5.7 per cent from 2023, accounting for 13.7 per cent of all foreign homebuyers, according to data provided by London-based property agency Benham and Reeves. In 2024, about 190,000 properties in England and Wales were owned by foreigners, up 2.6 per cent from a year earlier, the data showed. Hongkongers’ affinity for UK property has also been a boon for businesses like Skipton International, a Guernsey-based bank and mortgage lender. It said that in 2024, one out of every seven of its UK mortgage loans was held by a Hong Kong resident. Skipton is now offering customers a...

Hong Kong and mainland Chinese authorities are exploring how to prevent students from across the border from falling victim to scams before they arrive in the city amid a growing number of such cases, the Post has learned. A source also said on Sunday that the University of Hong Kong (HKU) had become the latest institution to implement a scam prevention quiz, with mainland students among those required to complete the questionnaire. Polytechnic University (PolyU) said students had to undergo online anti-deception training and a test as a prerequisite for admission since July last year. According to a campus news service, HKU requested on Thursday that select students complete the quiz or risk losing access to certain on-campus facilities. The number of university students scammed by fraudsters posing as government officials or law enforcement personnel rose from a monthly average of 24 between July and September last year to 91...

About 18,000 music fans descended on the soon-to-open Kai Tak Stadium for a concert on Saturday in the first non-sports trial run at Hong Kong’s newest venue. The 1½-hour “Four in Love” charity concert at the 50,000-seat stadium in Kai Tak Sports Park started after 6.30pm, more than 30 minutes later than the scheduled 6pm, and ended at around 8pm. With the concert featuring singers Jay Fung Wan-him, Cloud Wan Ho-ying and Jace Chan Hoi-wing, as well as local band Dear Jane, the stadium was hosting its biggest crowd yet ahead of a packed calendar of major events in the coming months. The show was among a series of trials at the park, which opens in March. Fung said he was elated to be the first singer to ever take the stage in the stadium, which will be the city’s biggest venue, and took a selfie with the audience to...

Homebuyers flocked to a new residential project by Early Light International Holdings in Hong Kong’s New Territories on Saturday, drawn by its value for money and investment potential ahead of the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump. As of 3.30pm, 179 of the 280 units offered at The Reserve at Gold Coast Bay in Tuen Mun were sold, according to agents. Hong Kong tycoon Francis Choi Chee-ming owns the developer. The flats – priced between HK$2.42 million (US$310,796) and HK$7.34 million after discounts, or HK$7,941 to HK$12,073 per square foot – have “parking-space prices” that attract both self-use buyers and investors, said Louis Chan Wing-kit, chief executive of Centaline Property Agency’s residential division. The latest batch includes 72 studios, 112 one-bedroom flats, 77 two-bedroom units, and 19 three-bedroom homes, with areas ranging from 304 to 655 square feet. About 40 per cent of the units were priced below HK$3 million,...

Beijing’s top envoy in Hong Kong has urged the city to broaden its links with the outside world to maintain its internationalisation, adding that it also needs to be more innovative to thrive in changing times, while the chief executive pledged to further boost the economy by taking bold steps. Zheng Yanxiong, director of the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong, also warned the city to stay “vigilant” and “alert” and not to overlook “the state of security” while seeking development, especially when the world was not at peace. “We must remember that a weak state of security undermines economic development, and the reverse is also true,” Zheng said, addressing guests from the city’s political and business circles on Friday at a banquet hosted by his office to celebrate the coming Lunar New Year. “It is equally crucial that we remain committed to both safeguarding national security and promoting...

Life insurance sales soared to a record in Hong Kong last year, as customers rushed in from the Middle East, Southeast Asia and mainland China. Sales grew 15.7 per cent in the first nine months of 2024 to HK$169.7 billion (US$21.8 billion), from HK$146.5 billion in the same period in 2023, according to the Insurance Authority (IA). Mainland customers snapped up Hong Kong’s coverage as hedges against the yuan’s depreciating value against the US dollar, helping to spur the city’s sales to the highest level since the IA’s establishment in 2016. “People from around the world, including Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, are buying life policies in Hong Kong,” the IA’s executive director of long-term business Marty Lui said during a media briefing. “An increasing number of Middle East visitors are buying policies in Hong Kong.” The authority will collect more data on the buying habits and policy types of...

Police have arrested an advertising company boss who said he had successfully invited Spanish football giants FC Barcelona to Hong Kong but was rejected by the match venue and released the image of an allegedly fake email to back up his claim. The arrest of the man on Thursday came a week after organiser Winman Advertising and Entertaining Group issued a press release saying it had intended to put on a football match involving Barcelona in July at a new 50,000-seat stadium in Kai Tak Sports Park. The announcement drew widespread media attention. The company said Barcelona had agreed to visit Hong Kong but the soon-to-open sports park had rejected its application to use Kai Tak Stadium. “Police do not rule out the possibility that some people may be wishful thinkers, believing they had the capability to facilitate international sporting events,” Chief Inspector Sun Yi-ki from the force’s cybersecurity and...

Hong Kong’s public finances are under rare pressure but there are clear reasons to maintain long-term confidence in the city’s future prosperity. I base this view on a rational assessment of what I know and see as a long-time business leader, investor and resident in the city. My assessment framework has three lenses: risk and opportunity as well as leadership and execution. Hong Kong’s risks and opportunities relate to the nature of its external and internal environments and how these are likely to change over the next five years. “Leadership” refers to the quality of those vested with financial decision-making and execution in the city. This puts financial secretary Paul Chan Mo-po in the hot seat so scrutinising his track record is important. Finally, “execution”, which refers to the coherence of the leadership’s action planning, is fundamental. Against these factors though, we see considerable resilience through a number of key...