Bloomberg News
@Bloomberg-News·2.8M subscribers·40.1K videos
Hong Kong's MTR Subway in Crisis After Repeated Attacks During Protests
Posted
September 16, 2019
Views
7,947
Likes
48
Comments
31
Engagement
September 16, 2019
7,947
48
31
0.99%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
Episode Timeline
Every episode in order around the one you’re watching — click any card and the page flips straight to it.
1:55Now PlayingFrom Sydney to Stockholm, governments looking for help with their rail systems turn to Hong Kong’s MTR Corp., renowned for its speedy, clean and reliable commuter trains.
That polished image is now tarnished at home, as months of unrest frequently boils into violence and vandalism on Hong Kong’s subway. MTR facilities have looked more like battlefields on some weekends. Protesters have smashed windows and set fires blazing outside stations. Police have fired pepper spray and been seen beating people aboard a train. Black-clad activists have protested at MTR-owned shopping centers and obstructed services on the network, which has more than 90 stations.
On Sunday (September 15), the MTR was at the center of more clashes as protesters set a fire outside a station in the Wan Chai area and broke windows. A number of stations were closed as the city grappled with yet another weekend of violence.
For many activists, MTR has become an antagonist, working with the government and the police to suppress their pro-democracy movement by closing stations and preventing people from going to and from protests.
“They are sacrificing passenger safety for the police,” said Katherine Chau, a 26-year-old airport worker who has taken part in protests, now in their 15th weekend. In early September, she began jumping over MTR turnstiles rather than paying as a way of opposing the broader system.
This has turned into a challenge for a new leadership team struggling to maintain MTR’s expansion abroad while also containing the damage from a 2018 construction scandal that severely damaged its reputation in Hong Kong.
Overseas, MTR operates rail networks in Australia, Sweden and the U.K. Closer to home, the company runs trains in mainland China and will operate a light rail system scheduled to open soon in Macau.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
TICTOC ON SOCIAL:
Follow TicToc on Twitter
Like TicToc on Facebook
Follow TicToc on Instagram
Watch all of TicToc’s videos
Listen to TicToc’s podcast
Subscribe to our newsletter
TicToc by Bloomberg is global news for the life you lead. We are a 24/7 news network that covers breaking news, politics, technology, business and entertainment stories from around the globe, supported by a network of Bloomberg’s 2,700 journalists across 120 countries.
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
