On November 7, the Hong Kong government issued a statement rebutting the joint criticism from ten countries regarding the sentencing of Joshua Wong, claiming it distorts facts and interferes with Hong Kong's judiciary.
At 11:00 AM on September 16, 2026, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee announced the first five-year plan in Hong Kong's history at the Legislative Council. The plan consists of 7 parts and 28 chapters, totaling over 60,000 words, and proposes 22 major indicators, 5 of which are binding. The plan covers targets such as land supply in the Northern Metropolis, innovation activities, industrial development, students, and tourists, requiring relevant indicators to be completed as scheduled.
The Hong Kong SAR government plans to submit its first five-year plan since the founding of the colony on September 16, introducing terms from the mainland's administrative system such as binding indicators and expected indicators.
Hung Shui Kiu Industrial Company received a capital injection of 10 billion. Chairman Lam Kin-fung said in September 2026 that the 10 billion is currently deposited mainly in banks to earn interest, and has not yet been invested in any projects.
On June 30, 2026, on the sixth anniversary of the entry into force of the Hong Kong National Security Law, Human Rights Watch released a report criticizing the full mainlandization of Hong Kong's governance structure; the report pointed out that within the year the Hong Kong government empowered police to compel the surrender of electronic passwords, and once again injected HK$5 billion into the national security budget.
On the public consultation day of the Five-Year Plan, the Hong Kong government unveiled a new approach, incorporating multiple intermediate stages into total R&D expenditure, thereby raising the proportion of total local innovation activity expenditure from 1.13% to 1.63%.
On June 8, 2026, the Hong Kong government submitted to the Legislative Council a proposal to amend subsidiary legislation, seeking to establish a Chief Executive certification mechanism, stipulating that the Chief Executive may determine whether an ordinary criminal case involves national security, and that cases so determined will be tried under National Security Law proceedings.
Hong Kong's fiscal reserves fell from over 1.17 trillion in March 2019 to over 650 billion in March 2026, with deficits in 5 of the 6 fiscal years and a cumulative deficit of over 550 billion, dropping below the unwritten bottom line set by former Financial Secretary Antony Leung that reserves must be enough to sustain the government for 12 months with zero revenue.
Following the major fire, the Hong Kong government suddenly announced it would spend 6.8 billion HKD in public funds to completely buy out the property rights of over 1,700 disaster-affected households in Wang Fuk Court, demolish the buildings, and convert the site into a park, sparking public suspicion that this is an effort to destroy evidence of engineering corruption.
Hong Kong's 2026 Budget announced the transfer of 150 billion from the Exchange Fund into the infrastructure reserve within two years, the first use of the Exchange Fund to pay for works projects since 1984, and was criticized for weakening the buffer of the Hong Kong dollar's linked exchange rate system.
Hong Kong issued a total of HK$155 billion in bonds in 2025-26. The budget counted bond issuance as revenue; after deducting HK$51.7 billion in maturing payments, the originally estimated HK$67 billion deficit became a HK$2.9 billion surplus.
The Hong Kong budget plans to issue 160 billion to 220 billion in bonds each year over the next five years, totalling 970 billion. Government debt as a share of GDP will rise from about 12% in early 2026 to 20%, and the debt-issuance ceiling will be raised for the third time to 900 billion.
Hong Kong's land premium income fell from HK$143 billion in the 2021-22 fiscal year (24% of total revenue) to only HK$18 billion in the 2026-27 budget (2.4%). During this period, a luxury residential site at Repulse Bay's Cape Road valued at over HK$20 billion and a residential site in Tung Chung both failed to attract bidders, and the government once went an entire quarter without putting up any residential site for sale.
In 2025, Hong Kong recorded a total of 89,137 criminal cases, 50% more than the 59,225 cases in 2019. Among them, 43,212 were fraud cases, accounting for half, with victims defrauded of HK$8.1 billion. Fraud cases have multiplied fivefold from fewer than 10,000 in 2019.
Hong Kong recorded 194 homicides in 2025, of which 168 — the deaths in the Wang Fuk Court fire — were classified as manslaughter, with the government arresting 16 people on manslaughter charges; of the 26 homicides outside the fire, 16 were committed among family members and relatives, compared with only 10 such cases in 2024.