Civic Passion was a
radical
Radical may refer to:
Politics and ideology Politics
* Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change
*Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe an ...
,
populist,
localist, and
nativist political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...
in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...
. Founded by
Wong Yeung-tat
Wong Yeung-tat (; born 29 May 1979) is a Hong Kong social activist and the founder and former leader of radical populist group Civic Passion.
Biography
Wong was born in Hong Kong and graduated from Hong Kong Baptist University. He joined Televis ...
as an activist group in 2012, it held strong
localist views and opposed the involvement of the Chinese government in the governance of Hong Kong. In the
2016 Legislative Council election, the Civic Passion formed an
electoral alliance
An electoral alliance (also known as a bipartisan electoral agreement, electoral pact, electoral agreement, electoral coalition or electoral bloc) is an association of political parties or individuals that exists solely to stand in elections.
E ...
with
Wong Yuk-man's
Proletariat Political Institute
Proletariat Political Institute is a political organisation and school headed by Wong Yuk-man, former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. It was first established by Wong in 2010 as a political educational institute within the Lea ...
and
Chin Wan's
Hong Kong Resurgence Order.
Cheng Chung-tai became the only candidate of the alliance elected to the legislature and subsequently took over as the leader of the Civic Passion. After the election, Cheng reorganised the group into a political party and pulled out from the social activism. From December 2020 to August 2021, it was the only opposition party in the
Legislative Council of Hong Kong
The Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (LegCo) is the unicameral legislature of Hong Kong. It sits under China's " one country, two systems" constitutional arrangement, and is the power centre of Hong Kon ...
.
History
Founding
The group was founded on 29 February 2012 by
Wong Yeung-tat
Wong Yeung-tat (; born 29 May 1979) is a Hong Kong social activist and the founder and former leader of radical populist group Civic Passion.
Biography
Wong was born in Hong Kong and graduated from Hong Kong Baptist University. He joined Televis ...
. Wong Yeung-tat was a candidate for the electoral alliance
People Power
"People Power" is a political term denoting the populist driving force of any social movement which invokes the authority of grassroots opinion and willpower, usually in opposition to that of conventionally organised corporate or political for ...
(a radical democratic political party) during the
2012 Legislative Council election in
Kowloon East constituency and Civic Passion served as the election campaign vehicle for Wong. After losing the election, Wong denied any relationship with People Power and Civic Passion became non-affiliated with any group.
As an
internet activist group, it runs ''Passion Times'' (), an organisation that publishes printed materials and broadcast
internet radio programmes and which has over 300,000
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...
followers. The group's app was banned in China's
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
App store during the
2014 Hong Kong protests.
During the protests, its website suffered
distributed denial-of-service
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conn ...
(DDoS) attacks, during which Passion Times claims its website was hit with up to 200,000,000 requests per second.
Activism and Umbrella Movement
Civic Passion takes a radical view towards the
Central People's Government
The State Council, constitutionally synonymous with the Central People's Government since 1954 (particularly in relation to local governments), is the chief administrative authority of the People's Republic of China. It is chaired by the p ...
of the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
and against the large influx of mainland tourists and
new immigrants to Hong Kong. Due to these anti-mainland sentiments, the group has been accused of
xenophobia
Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...
,
nativism and advocacy of
Hong Kong independence by the
pro-Beijing camp
The pro-Beijing camp, pro-establishment camp, pro-government camp or pro-China camp refers to a political alignment in Hong Kong which generally supports the policies of the Beijing central government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ...
and even by mainstream
democrats.
Civic Passion criticises the moderate
pan-democracy camp for their stance on immigration policy and border control and their relationship with Beijing. In 2013 and 2014, the group organised an alternative 4 June rally in
Tsim Sha Tsui
Tsim Sha Tsui, often abbreviated as TST, is an urban area in southern Kowloon, Hong Kong. The area is administratively part of the Yau Tsim Mong District. Tsim Sha Tsui East is a piece of land reclaimed from the Hung Hom Bay now east of Tsi ...
against the annual
vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown held by the
Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China of the pan-democracy camp as they accused it of being under the theme of
Chinese nationalistic sentiment. The alternative event attracted 200 people in 2013 and 7,000 in 2014, compared with 180,000 and 150,000 respectively for the Victoria Park event.
During the
2014 Hong Kong protests, Civic Passion was one of the constituent groups of the
Umbrella Movement. One of its activists, nicknamed "Frenchman", allegedly instigated the forced entry into the
Legislative Council Complex, in which masked raiders rammed glass doors and dispersed promptly after two panes of the glass door were broken. Wong Yeung-tat denied claims that he instigated or planned the incident. The group also allegedly tried to gain control of the main stage of
the Admiralty site and confronted the campaign leadership after the pan-democrats condemned the attack on the LegCo building.
In early 2015, it organised
anti-parallel trading protests
Anti-parallel trading protests () took place in Hong Kong between 2012 and 2015, and again in 2019, against parallel traders importing goods from Hong Kong to Mainland China. Protestors claim that parallel trading has caused a shortage of hous ...
with another
localist group Hong Kong Indigenous against the growing influx of mainland Chinese shoppers engaging in
parallel trading in early 2015, aggressively picketing the alleged shoppers and having clashes with the police. After the third demonstration, the central government said it would restrict Shenzhen residents to one visit a week.
In May 2016 Civic passion announced the creation of a summer camp program which would feature “military style training” and “lectures on localism”. Wong Yeung-tat dismissed claims by critics that the program was designed to instil a radical localist ideology, and instead likened the program to the
Hong Kong Army Cadets Association Limited led by
Regina Leung
Regina Leung Tong Ching-yee (; born 5 February 1957) is a former solicitor in Hong Kong. She is the wife of Leung Chun-ying, the former Chief Executive of Hong Kong.
Early life and marriage
Regina Tong was born at Tsan Yuk Hospital, the teac ...
, the wife of
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying
Leung Chun-ying (; born 12 August 1954), also known as CY Leung, is a Hong Kong politician and chartered surveyor, who has served as vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference since Ma ...
.
2015–2016 elections
In the
2015 District Council election, Civic Passion fielded six candidates, of which five ran against the
pro-democratic Democratic Party, but did not win any seat. However, Democrat heavyweight
Albert Ho lost his seat in
Lok Tsui to
pro-Beijing lawyer
Junius Ho with a margin of 125 votes while Civic Passion candidate
Cheng Chung-tai took 391 votes.
In the
2016 Legislative Council election, Civic Passion formed an
electoral alliance
An electoral alliance (also known as a bipartisan electoral agreement, electoral pact, electoral agreement, electoral coalition or electoral bloc) is an association of political parties or individuals that exists solely to stand in elections.
E ...
with
Proletariat Political Institute
Proletariat Political Institute is a political organisation and school headed by Wong Yuk-man, former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. It was first established by Wong in 2010 as a political educational institute within the Lea ...
's
Wong Yuk-man and
Hong Kong Resurgence Order's
Chin Wan. The electoral alliance set their platform Chin's "City-state theory", amending the current
Basic Law of Hong Kong to maintain the Hong Kong's "city-state" status with the means of a ''de facto'' referendum triggered by all five legislators of the alliance resigning from each geographical constituencies. The alliance ultimately lost as only one of their candidates Cheng Chung-tai in
New Territories West won a seat. The alliance bagged 154,176 votes, 7.11 per cent of the vote share. Wong Yeung-tat resigned from the leadership and was replaced by Cheng after the election.
After the election, Wong Yeung-tat resigned as the leader of Civic Passion and subsequently quit the group with his ''Passion Times''. Cheng took over as leader and transformed the group into a political party in which he became the chairman and
Alvin Cheng as vice-chairman. Cheng vowed to switch the party from "militant" street action to parliamentary path with community groundwork and pulled out from social activism entirely.
Parliament and disbandment
Cheng Chung-tai did not join the pro-democracy camp along with other anti-establishment colleagues after being elected to the Legislative Council. Cheng later became the only localist member in the parliament after the disqualification of members in the oath-taking controversy.
After protest erupted in mid-2019, the rift between Civic Passion and pro-democracy bloc still existed, as shown in House Committee brawl and
National Anthem Bill debates. In November 2020, 4 pro-democracy Legislative Council members were disqualified by Hong Kong Government in accordance with the decision from Beijing. All pro-democracy legislators resigned to protest against the "unlawful" act, but Cheng and unaligned
Pierre Chan announced their decision to stay, intensifying the disagreement between two sides.
Cheng Chung-tai was disqualified as Legislative Council member on 26 August 2021 after authorities deemed him as unpatriotic. Civic Passion, which he chaired, announced to disband on 3 September, citing no future political pathway ahead. Two district councillors from the party resigned on the same day.
Leadership
Leader
*
Wong Yeung-tat
Wong Yeung-tat (; born 29 May 1979) is a Hong Kong social activist and the founder and former leader of radical populist group Civic Passion.
Biography
Wong was born in Hong Kong and graduated from Hong Kong Baptist University. He joined Televis ...
, 2012–2016
Chairman
*
Cheng Chung-tai, 2016–2021
Vice-Chairman
*
Alvin Cheng, 2016–2020
* Wong Siu-kin, 2021–2021
Performance in elections
Legislative Council elections
District Council elections
See also
*
Internet activism
*
Localism in Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, localism is a political movement centered on the preservation of the city's autonomy and local culture. The Hong Kong localist movement encompasses a variety of groups with different goals, but all of them oppose the perceived gr ...
*
Localist groups (Hong Kong)
*
Hong Kong Autonomy Movement
*
Proletariat Political Institute
Proletariat Political Institute is a political organisation and school headed by Wong Yuk-man, former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. It was first established by Wong in 2010 as a political educational institute within the Lea ...
References
External links
*
熱血時報
{{Umbrella Movement
2012 establishments in Hong Kong
Political parties established in 2012
2021 disestablishments in Hong Kong
Political parties disestablished in 2021
Localist parties in Hong Kong
Political organisations based in Hong Kong
Political parties in Hong Kong