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The party, once the city’s largest opposition force, long championed a moderate approach. It ended up squeezed between a discontented populace and a repressive Beijing.
April 13, 2025, 5:27 a.m. ET
The Democratic Party in Hong Kong was for decades the city’s largest opposition party. It led protests demanding universal suffrage. Its lawmakers sparred with officials in the legislature about China’s encroachment on the region.
It was born in the 1990s of an audacious hope: that opposition politicians and activists could pressure Hong Kong’s iron-fisted rulers in Beijing to fulfill their promise of expanding democratic freedoms for the city of several million people.
On a rising wave of demands for democracy, the party grew to more than 1,000 members at its height in 2008. Its effort to maintain a moderate stance drew criticism, including from within its own ranks, from those seeking to push harder against Beijing. Yet moderation could not save the party’s leaders from being caught in the dragnet as China tightened its control over Hong Kong.
Now it is disbanding, one more casualty in Beijing’s suppression of Hong Kong’s once-vibrant political opposition.
Its leaders have been arrested and imprisoned on national security charges. Its members are effectively barred from running for local office, and routinely face harassment and threats. Raising money is hard.
“We have not achieved what we set out to do,” Fred Li, a founding member of the party who was not part of the most recent leadership, said in an interview, referring to democratization under Chinese rule. “Without money or resources, we can’t even survive ourselves.”
