The League has announced that it will announce its demise. “Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the League of Social Democrats. However, we will not survive to see that day and will announce our disbandment” (France 24 with AFP, June 27, 2025).
Over the years of its existence, the League called for more democracy in Hong Kong—a feature of political life essentially eliminated after China imposed the National Security Law of 2020—and, as the League’s name would suggest, more socialism, regarding economic inequalities as such as an original sin. One of the founders, Leung Kwok-hung, apparently thinks that Cuban communist and prolific murderer Che Guevera was a cool guy, judging by the T-shirt he’s wearing in one photo of the trio (shown above).
“When the system cannot faithfully represent the people’s demands and becomes a tool for the ruling classes, we must rely on a movement of the masses outside the system to put pressure on those in power,” LSD wrote on its website.
The party held three seats in Hong Kong’s legislature at its height.
It seized the spotlight in 2008 when then-party leader Raymond Wong threw bananas at Hong Kong’s leader during his annual policy speech, protesting against welfare cuts….
LSD figurehead [Leung Kwok-hung] was arrested in 2021 and jailed last year as part of a sprawling subversion case involving 47 opposition figures.
The party has held small public protests in recent years, often under heavy police surveillance.
Four members, including current leader Chan Po-ying, were fined this month for raising money in street campaigns “without permits”.
Hong Kong Free Press notes that “The LSD’s looming disbandment will make it the third major pro-democracy party to meet its end in recent years. The Civic Party folded in March 2024. The Democratic Party, the city’s largest opposition group, with 30 years of history, announced in February that it would begin steps to disband.”
No room
Lau Siu-kai, a consultant with a “semi-official” Beijing think tank, as the South China Morning Post puts it, suggests that China cares little what happens to the League, “which is a depleted force with minimal political appeal and is not even a viable political force.” Because: “Under the national security law and the new political configuration of ‘patriots governing Hong Kong’…there is no room in Hong Kong for an opposition party that refuses to recognise the constitutional order in Hong Kong undergirded by the Constitution of China and the Basic Law.”
That is, there is no room in Hong Kong for anyone who rejects Hong Kong’s CCP-led totalitarian order.
The post-2020 Hong Kong government tolerates no opposition, but it also wants to wanly pretend that it supports (some kind of) freedom and democracy (just not the kind that have the features of freedom and democracy). So it will allow an organization to conduct heavily surveilled “small public protests” while throwing its leaders in jail and fining the members for trying to keep the organization alive. The end result is the same as if the totalitarian crackdown had been instantaneous.
