HK First is a

localist Localism describes a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and Local purchasing, consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture ...

political party in Hong Kong. It had one representative 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 Kong ...

Claudia Mo Claudia Mo (born Mo Man-ching on 18 January 1957), also known as Claudia Bowring, is a Hong Kong journalist and politician, a member of the pan-democracy camp. She represented the Kowloon West geographical constituency, until November 2020 wh ...

, a former pan-democratic

Civic Party The Civic Party (CP) is a pro-democracy liberal political party in Hong Kong. It is currently chaired by barrister Alan Leong. The party was formed in 2006 on the basis of the Basic Law Article 45 Concern Group, which was derived from the B ...

member. It was founded in 2013 by two pro-democracy legislators, Claudia Mo and

Gary Fan Gary Fan Kwok-wai (; born 30 October 1966) is a Hong Kong politician. He was the member of Legislative Council from 2012 to 2016 and from 2018 to 2019 after winning the 2018 by-election for New Territories East. He is also a former member o ...

, to "defend the city's culture from 'mainlandisation'".

History

The group was formed on 31 January 2013 by the two pan-democratic legislators,

of the

and

Neo Democrats The Neo Democrats was a pro-democracy, localist political group in Hong Kong composed mainly of former and disenchanted members of the Democratic Party New Territories East branch after the 2012 constitutional reform proposals. It had held o ...

who shared sympathy with the growing localist sentiment in Hong Kong. It claims to "help safeguard not only Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy, but also its lifestyle as guaranteed unchanged for 50 years under

one country, two systems "One country, two systems" is a constitutional principle of the People's Republic of China (PRC) describing the governance of the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The constitutional principle was formulated in the early ...

and stipulated in the Basic Law". It concerns the cultural aspects of the Hong Kong lifestyle, including the use of

traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are one type of standard Chinese character sets of the contemporary written Chinese. The traditional characters had taken shapes since the clerical change and mostly remained in the same structure they took at ...

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...

and traditional phonetic translation between English and Cantonese, in which many localists deemed to be under "invasion" of the mainland China's

simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions, ...

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

and its phonetic translation. It also opposed the influxes of mainland tourists, grey goods traders, Mainland schools children who were seen as taken away the quota of the local students, panic-buying of baby formula and various social issues in related to

Hong Kong–Mainland conflict Hong may refer to: Places * Høng, a town in Denmark *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 city and specia ...

. Despite its localist agenda, the group does not advocate for

Hong Kong independence Hong Kong independence is a political movement that advocates the establishment of Hong Kong as an independent sovereign state. Hong Kong is one of two Special administrative regions of China (SAR) which enjoys a certain degree of autonomy ...

as compared to many other localists. It opposed the government's

Individual Visit Scheme The Individual Visit Scheme begun on 28 July 2003 allowing travelers from Mainland China to visit Hong Kong and Macau on an individual basis; prior to the Scheme, Mainland residents could only visit on business visas or on group tours. The outb ...

to limit the number of mainland tourists. They co-sponsored a controversial ad which claimed that reducing immigration would help the people of Hong Kong to get to the bottom of the housing problem, while rejecting claims of bias or discrimination against mainlanders, despite condemnation from the Equal Opportunities Commission. Fan later introduced a motion on adhering to the need to "put Hong Kong people first" in formulating policies, but the motion was ultimately defeated. Gary Fan ran in the

2012 Legislative Council election 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1 ...

with a "moderate" localist agenda in the New Territories East while Claudia Mo ran in

Kowloon West Kowloon West is the western part of Kowloon, covering the Yau Tsim Mong and Sham Shui Po District, with Kowloon City District occasionally included. History The boundary of Kowloon West is not strictly defined and hence varies. While traditio ...

with the slogan of "against mainlandisation". The two ran again in the 2016 Legislative Council election, in which Fan lost in the ferocious competition in New Territories East and left the group only one representative. In November 2016, Mo announced her resignation from the Civic Party, citing her differences with the party on matters especially localism. She said she would continue serving the legislature as an "independent democrat" under the label "HK First".

References

External links

* {{Hong Kong political parties 2013 establishments in Hong Kong Liberal parties in Hong Kong Localist parties in Hong Kong Political parties established in 2013 Political parties in Hong Kong Pro-democracy camp (Hong Kong)