Chairman Lo Kin-hei, centre, and other members of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, which has set up a special task force to discuss disbanding.HOLMES CHAN/AFP/Getty Images
The Hong Kong Democratic Party, a leading opposition force dating back to the British colonial era, is set to disband, following a years-long political crackdown in the Chinese territory that has seen prominent activists jailed and pro-democracy figures barred from standing for election.
At a meeting this week, party leadership agreed to set up a special task force to discuss disbanding, chair Lo Kin-hei said, without giving a timeline. Mr. Lo, himself an elected district councillor before changes to the law forced him and most other opposition figures to resign, would not say whether the decision was a result of political pressure.
Founded three years before Hong Kong’s 1997 handover from British to Chinese control, the Democratic Party seemed like a model opposition force for the new Special Administrative Region: equally committed to democracy and the principle of “one country, two systems” by which the territory would now be governed.
Speaking this week, Mr. Lo said the party’s dissolution was likely “inevitable,” pointing to the many other opposition organizations, including the Civic Party and human rights groups, which had already disbanded or ceased operation.
“This is not what we wanted to see,” Mr. Lo said Thursday, noting the party still believed “one country, two systems” could be a success.
“Diversity and inclusion and democracy are the basis of ‘one country, two systems’ and the basis of the Basic Law,” Hong Kong’s de facto constitution, he said. “I hope that in the future Hong Kong can thrive again.”
One of the party’s founders, Martin Lee, sat on the drafting committee for the Basic Law. Mr. Lee was expelled, however, after criticizing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which shocked many in Hong Kong and cast doubt on the idea, widespread at the time, that the territory – with its limited democracy and protections for human rights – would influence autocratic China, and not the other way around.
After Hong Kong’s last British governor, Chris Patten, defied both Beijing and London to further democratize the territory in the years leading up to the handover, the Democratic Party swept elections in 1995, winning a majority in the only fully elected legislature in Hong Kong’s history. Those lawmakers were swiftly kicked out of office on Beijing assuming control, however, with Mr. Lee giving a defiant speech from the balcony of the city’s parliament on the eve of handover.
“The members of my party, the Democratic Party, were among the first to support China’s resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong,” Mr. Lee said at the time.
He called on Beijing to fulfill its promises, made both in the Basic Law and the earlier Sino-British Joint Declaration, for an elected legislature and freedom under the rule of law. “The way to win the hearts and minds of Hong Kong people is to give more democracy – not to stifle it.”
This remark would prove prescient, as repeated failures to deliver on promised political reforms sparked mass protests, and saw the opposition movement become increasingly radical, with many young people in particular voicing support for Hong Kong’s independence from China, a concept anathema to Beijing.
Although it was the largest opposition force during the 2000s, the Democratic Party lost support after 2010, when it voted with the Hong Kong government on a compromise political reform package, and was overtaken by the rival Civic Party, with both competing for votes among a host of smaller, more radical parties.
Following the Umbrella Movement of 2014, the Democratic Party appeared to be heading for marginal status, but a new generation of leaders, including Mr. Lo, Lam Cheuk-ting and Wu Chi-wai – then vice-chair, chief executive and chair, respectively – won back the support of many pro-democracy voters. They played a key role in leading mass protests against a proposed extradition bill with China in 2019 that exploded into months of increasingly violent unrest as the movement’s demands expanded to include long-denied universal suffrage.
Pro-democracy parties won a landslide in local elections that November, with the Democrats securing more seats than any other group. But the following year, Beijing responded to growing opposition in Hong Kong by imposing a national security law, which was swiftly used to crack down on the pro-democracy movement and rewrite election rules to bar all but pre-vetted “patriots.”
Mr. Wu and Mr. Lam were arrested in January, 2021, and later jailed for subversion, along with dozens of other leading opposition figures, leaving Mr. Lo to lead a political party with no elected representation. When the Democrats tried to field candidates for local elections in 2023, they were unable to secure the required nominations from various pro-Beijing groups given control of the process.