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Letters

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As Hong Kong’s chief executive prepares to unveil the city’s first five-year plan and his 2026 policy address on Wednesday, child safety should be recognised as a central part of the city’s long-term development agenda. With online grooming and artificial intelligence abuse continuing to escalate, telling children to “be careful online” is no longer enough. Protecting young people requires comprehensive sexuality education, strict digital safeguarding and clear systems for prevention, reporting and support.
The landscape of child sexual exploitation is rapidly shifting online. Hong Kong’s police force recorded 100 cases of online child sexual grooming in 2025 with a further 40 reported in just the first four months of 2026, and at least one victim as young as 10. Crucially, 37 per cent of the 1,354 newly registered child protection cases in 2025 involved sexual abuse.
These figures reveal an uncomfortable reality: harm is not limited to strangers or physical spaces. Schoolmates, friends and peers were among the most commonly identified perpetrators implicated in grooming, sexual exploitation and image-based abuse, meaning children can be harmed by people they know and trust.
In fact, grooming rarely starts with obvious coercion but begins with attention, emotional validation and false friendship. Once trust is built, perpetrators may introduce secrecy or request intimate images. As a result, victims may feel too ashamed or confused to seek help.
To address these risks, children need more than warnings about online dangers. Clear, age-appropriate and evidence-based education on consent, personal boundaries, healthy relationships, help-seeking and online safety must be prioritised. Plan International Hong Kong therefore calls for a comprehensive review of sexuality education to ensure every child receives consistent and practical learning, regardless of the school they attend.
The rise of generative AI also creates further urgency. AI tools make it effortless to produce sexualised deepfakes used to humiliate, exploit or blackmail young people, with catastrophic psychological impacts when shared among peers or online communities.
While government initiatives to strengthen AI literacy are welcome, education must extend beyond technical skills to include digital ethics, consent and online respect. Besides, Hong Kong should establish a formal AI safeguarding framework for schools, requiring clear operational protocols for handling disclosures, supporting affected students, limiting the spread of harmful content and reporting incidents appropriately.
Children have a fundamental right to safety, dignity and privacy. As technology reshapes how children interact and experience harm, our education and safeguarding systems must evolve to keep children protected.
Dr Kanie Siu Mei-kuen, CEO, Plan International Hong Kong
A ‘golden’ Hong Kong dollar anyone?
With the United States’ sovereign debt at US$40 trillion, the collapse of the US dollar seems like only a matter of time. When that day comes, the Hong Kong dollar, which is pegged to the US dollar, is likely to see a sharp fall in value.
Panic selling of the Hong Kong dollar would be inevitable. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority would be forced to buy Hong Kong dollars on the foreign exchange market to defend the peg, and despite having around US$442.9 billion in the Exchange Fund, it could be badly outmatched by a much larger pool of sellers and speculators.
A broken peg would be disastrous for Hong Kong, but there is a way to prevent this. Create a new “golden” Hong Kong dollar, fully backed by gold and freely exchangeable with the traditional Hong Kong dollar at 1:1. Both would remain legal tender in the city. At a gold price of US$5,000 per troy ounce, only around 500 tonnes of gold would be needed to back the roughly HK$640 billion (US$82 billion) currently in circulation. The central government has gold reserves far in excess of that.
More importantly, if the US dollar collapses, Hong Kong dollar holders could convert their traditional holdings into golden Hong Kong dollars at par in an orderly manner. In a world short of gold-backed currencies, the golden Hong Kong dollar would be a uniquely secure safe harbour.
Even if the US dollar never collapses, the golden Hong Kong dollar would still be a beacon that attracts global capital, strengthening Hong Kong’s role as an international financial centre.
Guy Lam, Admiralty


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Hong Kong children

The landscape of child sexual exploitation is rapidly shifting online. Photo: DPA

Social media must join the fight against teen suicides

Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen

Families who lost members to suicide due to social media addiction reacting after a jury found Meta Platforms and YouTube liable in the social media addiction trial, outside the Los Angeles Superior Court in California on March 25, in a landmark ruling. Photo: EPA

Young people use their mobile phones at a shopping mall in Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong on July 8. Social media platforms should detect and remove harmful content and act swiftly against cyberbullying. Photo: Elson Li

Let’s protect Hong Kong’s children from social media ourselves

Students use their smartphones while queuing outside a restaurant in Tseung Kwan O on October 16,2025. Photo:  Elson Li

Hong Kong under-15 suicides hit decade high as social media comes under scrutiny

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention has also called for schools to strengthen support for students in light of a spate of suicide attempts around the start of the academic year. Photo: Jelly Tse

The centre conducted an AI-assisted review of news reports on suicide cases by six local Chinese-language media outlets and found that most of the stories failed to comply with WHO guidelines. Photo: Jelly Tse

Calls for Hong Kong anti-stalking law after man acquitted of following teen girl

Anti-stalking legislation was proposed in the past but put on hold. Photo: Getty Images 

A recent case at Eastern Court sparked calls for anti-stalking legislation. Photo: Eugene Lee

Court acquits brother of incest, citing failure to prove teen knew it was wrong

The High Court in Admiralty. A jury of five men and two women acquitted the defendant on Wednesday of four counts of incest and three of indecent conduct towards a child under 16. Photo: Nora Tam

Opinion

Readers discuss the danger of child sexual exploitation shifting online, and the Hong Kong dollar peg


Readers discuss the danger of child sexual exploitation shifting online, and the Hong Kong dollar peg.


.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Readers discuss the danger of child sexual exploitation shifting online, and the Hong Kong dollar peg

Readers discuss the danger of child sexual exploitation shifting online, and the Hong Kong dollar peg