Five Clean Years Beat A HK$21,000 Guide Badge
The Job Nobody Notices
So Didi wants to test driverless cars in Tseung Kwan O, the new town out past Kowloon Bay. Before that happens, someone has to sit in the front seat and watch the computer drive, basically a human backstop in case the software gets confused. Didi told the Transport Secretary on September 3 it's applying this year, and it's already hiring the people for that seat. HK$21,000 to HK$22,000 a month, and you need five clean years on your Hong Kong licence just to qualify, meaning five years with no accidents, no bans, nothing on your record. Five years. Clean. For a job where your main task is not touching the wheel.
Look, I get it. New tech, nervous regulators, nobody wants a robot car in a ditch on day one. Fair enough, that's exactly the kind of caution you'd want before letting a self-driving car loose on public roads. But hold that number in your head for a second, because we're about to meet someone who did a lot more than sit quietly, and it took the government most of a year to notice.
Three Strikes, Then A Badge
On September 7 the Travel Industry Authority, the body that licenses tour guides and travel agencies in Hong Kong, pulled the licences of two agencies, Go Go Ming Travel Services and Grandee Travel Company, plus a guide named Sun Kwun-ying. The reason: coercing mainland tour groups into buying stuff, meaning pressuring tourists on a package trip into spending money at shops the agency steers them to. Investigators found she made threatening remarks to push shoppers into a purchase, back in February and April. The agencies just let it happen.
Here's the part that got me. DAB lawmaker Nixie Lam, a pro-establishment legislator, pointed out this is the third time this year TIA has stripped licences for exactly this, after two earlier 2026 revocations for the same coercion complaint. Third time. The authority calls it 'zero tolerance.' I'd call it a pattern. Zero tolerance usually means you stop the thing before it happens, not that you keep catching it, again and again, after tourists already handed over their cash in a shop they got walked into against their will.
Two Checks, One City
So compare the paperwork. To sit next to a self-driving car and watch it not crash, you need five spotless years and a monthly salary that beats a lot of office jobs. To lead actual tourists around actual Hong Kong, alone, with them trusting you to get them home safely and not scammed, apparently you can rack up complaints for months before anyone takes your badge.
TIA announced on September 7 that it's stepping up joint inspections with police before October's golden week, the mainland's national holiday stretch when visitor numbers to Hong Kong spike and shops depend on the traffic. The system waits for the guide to get caught a third time, then acts fast right before the cameras show up.
*A driverless car in Tseung Kwan O gets a babysitter with five years of a clean record. A tour guide gets three strikes and a badge pull timed to golden-week inspections starting this October.*