It was a rare moment when Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor admitted last week to shortcomings in handling the city’s Omicron-fuelled fifth wave of Covid-19 infections. Announcing that a controversial mass testing exercise for the entire population would be suspended, she cited the city’s “very weak” community mobilisation capabilities. The need to mobilise has been in the air since pro-Beijing newspapers quoted President Xi Jinping saying a month ago that Lam’s administration had to move “all forces and resources” to protect people’s lives and health amid the devastating fifth wave. Although the city’s tycoons and patriotic politicians raced to donate money and facilities, and organised volunteers to help, Xia Baolong, Beijing’s top official overseeing Hong Kong affairs, pressed Lam two weeks ago to do more and “further mobilise” all available forces in society. Over the past three months, Hong Kong has seen infection numbers shoot up to 1.1 million cases with more than 7,100 deaths as of Saturday, with many left to isolate at home with insufficient support after testing positive. Observers attributed the weak community response to the government’s destruction of district-level bodies, differential treatment of civil society groups along “blue” and “yellow” lines reflecting their support for the government or opposition, and Hongkongers’ lack of trust in the authorities. “The government has put itself in a difficult position by creating a tense atmosphere for social mobilisation and community groups – particularly by stifling dissent among members of society,” said Kris Hartley, an assistant professor at Education University who studied policymaking in a low-trust society during the pandemic. “This has led to an environment of growing suspicion, secrecy and distrust.” Spontaneous Yellow, top-down Blue While community groups and individuals have stepped up to help during the fifth wave, this has occurred along political lines. After the fifth wave of infections hit, hairdresser Yuen Wing-kit asked his clients to help the needy and they responded by donating biscuits, drinks and hygiene supplies. Last Thursday, he delivered the bags of supplies to his district councillor, Chris Mak Yun-pui, in Ma On Shan. “This was for the elderly and families under home quarantine unable to receive government support,” Yuen said. “I’ve known Mak Zai for years and trust that he has the connections to get them delivered to those in need.” Yuen found Mak’s 100 sq ft office crammed with donations from other residents. Hongkongers, NGOs help those in need with free Covid-19 test kits, food supplies Mak, a 34-year-old social worker, said he now spent most of his time linking community resources and mobilising volunteers to deliver emergency supplies to support residents’ basic needs for seven days. “Residents have been responsive to my appeals on Facebook. But at most, we can help only 40 households a week due to manpower and time constraints,” he said. The former Democratic Party member is one of only nine remaining councillors in the 42-member Sha Tin district council, after many of his allies resigned or were unseated in the wake of the national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing in 2020. Mak replaced his protégé Raymond Li Chi-wang as council chairman last October, but said he felt marginalised after the Home Affairs Department, which oversees district administration, refused to grant funds to buy rapid test kits and masks for residents. “We sought funding several times, but they didn’t approve even HK$1 and did not give any reasons,” he said. He found that disappointing, especially since officials had allocated funds to pro-Beijing civic groups for anti-epidemic supplies in the initial stages of the pandemic in 2020. Meanwhile, donations and supplies have poured in to pro-establishment civic groups, including the Hong Kong Community Anti-Coronavirus Link, Hong Kong Volunteers Against Coronavirus and Hong Kong Coalition, initiated by former city leaders Tung Chee-hwa and Leung Chun-ying. With support from local businesses, pro-Beijing groups and mainland China, these networks amassed 1.2 million medical masks, 750,000 rapid test kits and 114,000 Chinese medicine packs in two months, according to updates by Kennedy Wong Ying-ho, deputy secretary general of the coalition. “We have already dispatched more than 1 million items to the needy with our extensive network of volunteers,” he said. The group recently started hotlines for those seeking help, and has a fleet of 120 taxis providing free transport to public hospital healthcare workers. Li, a taxi driver who joined the initiative, said: “Doctors and nurses who took our rides told us our service allowed them to save half an hour or more for rest every day and also reduced their chances of getting infected when commuting.” ‘Decades of work undone in months’ Nelson Chow Wing-sun, emeritus professor of social work and social administration at the University of Hong Kong, saw limitations in the “top-down” manner in which pro-establishment bodies mobilised volunteers. “Core members of the camp are used to swinging into action after leaders blow the whistle, but their response is often not spontaneous,” he said. “The scale of mobilisation can be limited and the process slow.” He noted that for decades, the basic elements of Hong Kong’s district administration had included district councils, mutual aid committees made up of residents of buildings and area committees that promoted public participation in district affairs. Hong Kong support drive helps over 700 care homes, 30,000 children Chow said that since the 1990s, the functions of the latter two groups were increasingly taken over by district councils, which were envisioned as municipal-level elected advisory bodies. Then came the district council elections of 2019, when opposition candidates swept control of almost all the city’s 18 councils. By late last year, following the introduction of the national security law and sweeping electoral reforms to ensure that “patriots” run Hong Kong, two-thirds of the 452 councillors – all from the opposition camp – were out of their seats. “It took a few months for the government to break community links that had taken 40 years to build up. We can’t expect anyone to have the ability to rebuild them soon,” Chow said. Complaints mount from Hong Kong residents in lockdown amid cross-infection fears Many mutual aid committees have also been told by authorities to fold by July this year, for unspecified reasons. Among them were the 16 committees in Kwai Chung Estate, which emerged as the epicentre of the fifth wave of infections in late January. Residents placed under lockdown for up to five days complained of chaos that ranged from confusion over testing to hygiene issues, uncollected garbage and the lack of food delivery. An insider told the Post that many of the area’s core committee members were “no longer active” in helping residents. “Some of them asked why they should offer help when they were told by the government to ‘gradually disband’,” he said. When the crisis occurred, both of the area’s elected pro-democracy district councillors were out of their seats. Ivan Wong Yun-tat, who had served the southern part of the estate for 13 years, resigned last May, while Leung Kam-wai was serving a three-month jail sentence for offences related to his previous role in the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. ‘Make people love their home’ City leader Lam’s U-turn last week on proceeding with mass screening for the coronavirus sparked an outcry among pro-Beijing politicians who accused her administration of a lack of determination to impose a mainland China-style lockdown that would allow universal testing to be carried out. Dominic Lee Tsz-king, of the New People’s Party, felt Lam’s lament about weak community mobilisation was merely an excuse as there had been no difficulty organising the 2019 district council elections smoothly with nearly 3 million voters and more than 600 polling stations. “It’s a matter of will,” he said. “We have networks of volunteers and 170,000 civil servants the government can mobilise.” Coronavirus lockdown: what can Hong Kong learn from China’s cities? Education University’s Hartley said the real issue was whether the government had calculated that it could not afford a further erosion of public trust and credibility by going ahead with the controversial mass testing. He added that in any society, the government alone could not be present in all spaces of social service delivery. He said the 2019 social unrest showed that Hong Kong was able to develop community capacity, something that was also seen during the 2003 Sars epidemic. In a crisis like the fifth wave of Covid-19 infections, the government needed to tap civil society’s influence on individual behaviour, instead of giving differential treatment along political lines. “Hong Kong must recognise that creating more space for community groups to respond to crises is not a threat to government legitimacy,” Hartley said. “The best but probably hardest thing the Hong Kong government can do to enhance its crisis response capacity is to go about the difficult work of regaining trust among large segments of the population.” Chow added that instead of leaving the district councils “half-dead”, there was a pressing need for a comprehensive review of the district administration system after the epidemic subsided. “In the long run, the government should walk towards rebuilding people’s sense of belonging to their own communities,” he said. “When people love and care about their own places, they become motivated and will organise among themselves to help in a crisis.”