Democratic Party (Hong Kong)

Democratic Party 民主黨
Chairperson	Lo Kin-hei
Vice Chairpersons	Bonnie Ng Mok Kin-shing
Founded	2 October 1994; 29 years ago (1994-10-02)
Merger of	United Democrats Meeting Point The Frontier[a]
Headquarters	4/F, Hanley House, 776–778 Nathan Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Youth wing	Young Democrats
Membership (2017)	733
Ideology	Liberalism (HK)
Political position	Centre[1]
Regional affiliation	Pro-democracy camp
Colours	Green
Slogan	"Giving It All"
Legislative Council	0 / 90
District Councils	0 / 470
Website
dphk.org
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The Democratic Party (DP) is a liberal^[2] political party in Hong Kong. The party generally sits at the centre^[3] of the Hong Kong political spectrum. Chaired by Lo Kin-hei, it is the flagship party in the pro-democracy camp and currently has no elected representatives in the District Councils.

The party was established in 1994 in a merger of the United Democrats of Hong Kong and Meeting Point in preparation for the 1995 Legislative Council election. The party won a landslide victory, received over 40 percent of the popular vote and became the largest party in the legislature in the final years of the British colonial era. It opposes the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen protests of 1989 and called for the end of one-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); the party has long been seen as hostile to the Beijing authorities.

Led by Martin Lee, the Democratic Party boycotted the Provisional Legislative Council (PLC) on the eve of the Hong Kong handover in 1997 in protest to Beijing's decision to dismantle the agreed transition, but reemerged as the largest party in the first SAR Legislative Council election of 1998. Due to the Beijing-installed proportional representation voting system, the Democrats embattled in bitter factional conflicts in the early post-handover era. Although the party's popularity briefly rebounded after the 2003 pro-democracy demonstration, its dominance was gradually eclipsed by the emergence of the new parties.

As a response to the electoral gains of the Civic Party and the League of Social Democrats (LSD), the Democratic Party merged with Emily Lau's The Frontier in 2008. The party made a surprising move by negotiating with the Beijing officials over the constitutional reform package in 2010. It resulted in a catastrophic split within the pro-democracy camp. Being ferociously attacked by the radical democrats, the party sharply lost support in the 2012 Legislative Council election, retaining only six seats. Afterwards, the Democrats underwent a rejuvenation process in which most veterans retired and made way for the new generation in the 2016 election.

Following the widespread anti-government movement in 2019, the party won a landslide victory in the 2019 District Council elections. After the imposition of the Hong Kong national security law in July 2020 and subsequent disqualifications of four pro-democracy camp legislators, every incumbent legislator of the party, along with the whole camp's, resigned in protest. It left the party with no representation for the first time since 1998. In January 2021, the resigned legislators were arrested under the national security law for participating in the July 2020 pro-democracy primaries. The government introduced a requirement that all district councillors had to swear an oath of allegiance to the HKSAR, upon which many pro-democracy councillors, fearful of retroactive disqualification and bankruptcy threats, chose to resign from their office.^[4]

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