An embattled rail boss, a beleaguered justice minister, a rejected foreign correspondent – some of the people who made the news in Hong Kong this year
- MTR Corporation head Frederick Ma faced a number of crises; Andy Chan saw his Hong Kong National Party banned
- Victor Mallet fell foul of immigration authorities; Teresa Cheng had some legal trouble, and Andy Lau ended the year on a low note
Under the cloud of the US-China trade war in 2018, Hong Kong worried about business opportunities for the longer term, but more immediate matters dominated the headlines: dubious train structures, an expensive, long-delayed cross-border bridge, an even more expensive high-speed cross-border rail link and horrific road accidents.
And then there were the usual political tensions, as the city set out to implement the clear red lines determined by Beijing on not tolerating independence activists or even those seen by the government to be enabling them. Yet amid all the rancour, Hong Kong did not forget its entertainers.
We look back on five newsmakers from these sectors who made the headlines, not always for the right reasons.
Frederick Ma Si-hang
What happened to him:
Ma, 66, had a roller-coaster ride in 2018 as non-executive chairman of embattled railway giant the MTR Corporation. In the final year of his three-year contract, he had to grapple with a series of crises at the company – the scandal of the city’s most expensive rail project, the HK$97.1 billion (US$12.4 billion) Sha Tin-Central rail link; a reshuffle of top management, including himself, and the continuing investigation into the project’s structural integrity and whether it had been subject to a criminal offence.
