The impending shutdown of Hong Kong’s largest and last opposition party is more symbolic than anything else; democracy has been in tatters here for years, and, electorally, the Democratic Party has had nothing to do. But that’s not how it must feel for the members on the receiving end of China’s diktat (“China has told Hong Kong’s last major opposition party to disband, members say,” The Strait Times, April 13, 2025).
Five senior members of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, the city’s biggest and last remaining major opposition party, say that Chinese officials or middlemen have warned the party to disband or face serious consequences, including possible arrests.
The Democratic Party, which was founded three years before Hong Kong’s return from British to Chinese rule in 1997, has been the flagship opposition party in the city, uniting democratic forces to push Beijing on democratic reforms and to uphold freedoms in the financial hub.
Amid a years-long national security crackdown by China after pro-democracy protests in 2019, the Democratic Party will hold an extraordinary general meeting on April 13 to seek members’ views and possibly pave the way for the group’s dissolution.
The deadline for dissolution is this December. The party should be gone before the legislative elections scheduled for that month take place, party members have been told.
The Democratic Party meeting scheduled for April 13 took place. At that meeting, members voted in favor of beginning the process of shutting down.
In 2021, the Chinese government moved to ban non-“patriot” candidates from standing for office in Hong Kong, effectively hobbling all opposition parties, including the Democratic Party. So although the DP still exists, it exists only as an organization functioning as something other than a political party.
What shrine?
The Hong Kong government says that decisions by groups on whether “to disband or suspend operation are completely unrelated to the freedom or rights enshrined in Hong Kong law.” Which is as clear as mud with respect to intended meaning but literally true: the seriatim forced closures of so many political groups in Hong Kong over the last several years has nothing to do with organizers’ exercise of “freedom” and “rights.”
In any case, no freedom or rights of the individual or of political parties are enshrined in Hong Kong law, because none are enshrined in Chinese law, and Hong Kongers no longer benefit from the deference for due process and rights of its erstwhile “second system.”
Such freedom and rights may be specified here and there in the documents of the PRC’s law codes and constitution. But since the Chinese Communist Party ignores any such specifications at will, it’s as if never a word has been said about them.
