Once Hong Kong’s biggest opposition party, the Democratic Party has announced plans to disband amid a political crackdown in the city under two security laws.
“It is a decision that we made based on our understanding of the overall political environment,” Chairman Lo Kin-hei told journalists following a meeting of the party’s central committee on Thursday.
“Developing democracy in Hong Kong is always difficult, and it’s been especially difficult in the past few years,” Lo told reporters in the party’s headquarters, adding: “This is not what we wanted to see.”
Lo said he hoped that Hong Kong would return to the values of “diversity, tolerance and democracy” that were the cornerstones of the city’s past success.
The move is widely seen as the symbolic end of any formal political opposition in Hong Kong, where critics of the authorities can face prosecution under security legislation brought in to quell dissent in the wake of the 2019 protests.
It follows repeated calls for the party’s dissolution in Chinese Communist Party-backed media like the Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po.
The news came just weeks after a court in Hong Kong sentenced 45 democratic politicians and activists to jail terms of up to 10 years for “subversion” after they took part in a democratic primary in the summer of 2020.
The ongoing political crackdown has already seen the dissolution of the Civic Party, which disbanded in May 2023 after its lawmakers were barred from running for re-election in the wake of the 2020 National Security Law.
The pro-democracy youth activist party Demosisto disbanded in June 2020.
‘That light has faded’
Lo said the disbandment couldn’t go ahead without a vote from a general meeting attended by 75% of the party’s members.
He said he will chair a three-person working group to handle the process following what he called a “collective decision” by the Central Committee.
Lo declined to comment on reports that party members had been harassed or threatened by people acting as messengers for the Chinese government. He said the party wasn’t in financial difficulty.
Founding party member Fred Li said the Democratic Party had “done its duty and shone its light on Hong Kong.”
“But we can see today that that light has faded,” Li said in comments reported by the Hong Kong Free Press.
Taiwan-based bookseller Lam Wing-kei, who was detained in mainland China for selling banned political books from Hong Kong, said there was “no point in pretending” that there is still any room for political opposition under Chinese rule.
“This is the total end of party politics in Hong Kong,” Lam told RFA Mandarin in an interview on Friday. “There’s no way the Communist Party is going to allow an opposition party to carry on existing. Under their rule, nobody else is allowed a voice.”
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He said he worries that Beijing’s attention may now focus on moves to destroy democracy in Taiwan, which has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China.
“The pace could accelerate in the next few years,” he said of Chinese infiltration in Taiwan.
Taiwan-based Hong Kong artist Kacey Wong said the party had played a hugely important role in the development of Hong Kong’s democracy before the current crackdown.
“Its founder Martin Lee and the kind of values he represented embodied the attitudes of many Hong Kong people towards freedom and democracy -- they were pretty moderate,” Wong said.
He said its death would mark the end of democratic party politics in Hong Kong.
“The Democratic Party was once the most important party when it came to gauging public opinion, so its death actually represents the ultimate death of public opinion [as a political force] in Hong Kong,” Wong said.
‘We must be vigilant’
He said fears that Hong Kong would become a base for opposition to Chinese Communist Party rule had led Beijing to break its promise that the city could keep its freedoms for 50 years after the 1997 handover.
He warned that Beijing was trying to undermine Taiwan’s democracy by placing its supporters in positions of power, much as it did in Hong Kong.
“Taiwanese people must be vigilant and must not believe the Chinese Communist Party’s promises to Taiwan that it can keep its freedoms if it submits to Beijing’s rule,” Wong said. “We must be vigilant, and we must resist.”
Political commentator Sang Pu said the Democratic Party would never be allowed to field candidates under the current system in Hong Kong.
“A political party that doesn’t run for election has no way to raise funds,” Sang said. “They get rejected [by venues] even when they try to hold party events ... for spurious reasons like chefs getting into a fight or broken water meters.”
“They are being badly suppressed, so at this point it’s probably better to give up,” he said.
Recent electoral reforms now ensure that almost nobody in the city’s once-vibrant opposition camp will stand for election again, amid the jailing of dozens of pro-democracy figures and rule changes requiring political vetting.
The last directly elected District Council, which saw a landslide victory for pro-democracy candidates amid record turnout that was widely seen as a ringing public endorsement of the 2019 protest movement.
The first Legislative Council election after the rule change saw plummeting turnout, while Chief Executive John Lee was given the top job after an “election” in which he was the only candidate.
Since Beijing imposed the two national security laws banning public opposition and dissent in the city and blamed “hostile foreign forces” for the resulting protests, hundreds of thousands have voted with their feet amid plummeting human rights rankings, shrinking press freedom and widespread government propaganda in schools.
The government has blamed several waves of pro-democracy protests in recent years on “foreign forces” trying to instigate a democratic revolution in Hong Kong.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.