Civic Passion 熱血公民 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Chairman | Cheng Chung-tai |
| Founded | 29 February 2012 (2012-02-29) |
| Dissolved | 3 September 2021 (2021-09-03) |
| Headquarters | Yuen Long, Hong Kong |
| Newspaper | Passion Times |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Right-wing[2] |
| Colours | Yellow |
| Website | |
| civicpassion | |
| Civic Passion | |||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 熱血公民 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 热血公民 | ||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | hot-blooded (passionate) citizens | ||||||||||||
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Civic Passion was aradical,[3]populist,[4]localist,[5] andnativist[3]political party inHong Kong. Founded byWong Yeung-tat as an activist group in 2012, it held stronglocalist views and opposed the involvement of the Chinese government in the governance of Hong Kong.[6] In the2016 Legislative Council election, the Civic Passion formed anelectoral alliance withWong Yuk-man'sProletariat Political Institute andChin Wan'sHong 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 theLegislative Council of Hong Kong.
The group was founded on 29 February 2012 byWong Yeung-tat.[7] Wong Yeung-tat was a candidate for the electoral alliancePeople Power (a radical democratic political party) during the2012 Legislative Council election inKowloon 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 aninternet activist group, it runsPassion Times (Chinese:熱血時報), an organisation that publishes printed materials and broadcastinternet radio programmes and which has over 300,000Facebook followers. The group's app was banned in China'sAppleApp store during the2014 Hong Kong protests.[8] During the protests, its website suffereddistributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, during which Passion Times claims its website was hit with up to 200,000,000 requests per second.[9]
Civic Passion takes a radical view towards theCentral People's Government of thePeople's Republic of China and against the large influx of mainland tourists andnew immigrants to Hong Kong. Due to these anti-mainland sentiments, the group has been accused ofxenophobia,nativism and advocacy ofHong Kong independence by thepro-Beijing camp and even by mainstreamdemocrats.[10]
Civic Passion criticises the moderatepan-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 inTsim Sha Tsui against the annualvigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown held by theHong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China of the pan-democracy camp as they accused it of being under the theme ofChinese 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.[11][12]
During the2014 Hong Kong protests, Civic Passion was one of the constituent groups of theUmbrella Movement. One of its activists, nicknamed "Frenchman", allegedly instigated the forced entry into theLegislative 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.[13] The group also allegedly tried to gain control of the main stage ofthe Admiralty site and confronted the campaign leadership after the pan-democrats condemned the attack on the LegCo building.[14]
In early 2015, it organisedanti-parallel trading protests with anotherlocalist groupHong Kong Indigenous against the growing influx of mainland Chinese shoppers engaging inparallel trading in early 2015, aggressively picketing the alleged shoppers and having clashes with the police.[15] After the third demonstration, the central government said it would restrict Shenzhen residents to one visit a week.[3]
In May 2016 Civic passion announced the creation of a summer camp program which would feature “military style training” and “lectures on localism”.[16] Wong Yeung-tat dismissed claims by critics that the program was designed to instil a radical localist ideology, and instead likened the program to theHong Kong Army Cadets Association Limited led byRegina Leung, the wife ofChief ExecutiveLeung Chun-ying.
In the2015 District Council election, Civic Passion fielded six candidates, of which five ran against thepro-democraticDemocratic Party, but did not win any seat. However, Democrat heavyweightAlbert Ho lost his seat inLok Tsui topro-Beijing lawyerJunius Ho with a margin of 125 votes while Civic Passion candidateCheng Chung-tai took 391 votes.[17]
In the2016 Legislative Council election, Civic Passion formed anelectoral alliance withProletariat Political Institute'sWong Yuk-man andHong Kong Resurgence Order'sChin Wan. The electoral alliance set their platform Chin's "City-state theory", amending the currentBasic Law of Hong Kong to maintain the Hong Kong's "city-state" status with the means of ade 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 inNew 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.[18]
After the election, Wong Yeung-tat resigned as the leader of Civic Passion and subsequently quit the group with hisPassion Times. Cheng took over as leader and transformed the group into a political party in which he became the chairman andAlvin 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.[19]
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.[citation needed]
After protest erupted in mid-2019, the rift between Civic Passion and pro-democracy bloc still existed, as shown in House Committee brawl andNational 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 unalignedPierre Chan announced their decision to stay, intensifying the disagreement between two sides.[citation needed]
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.[20]
| Election | Number of popular votes | % of popular votes | GC seats | FC seats | Total seats | +/− | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 122,140 | 5.63 | 1 | 0 | 1 / 70 | 1 | 10th |
| Election | Number of popular votes | % of popular votes | Total elected seats | +/− |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 3,006 | 0.21 | 0 / 431 | 0 |
| 2019 | 14,326 | 0.49 | 2 / 452 | 2 |
Activists from Civic Passion appear more concerned to locate their Hong Kong nationalism within the Chinese cultural tradition.
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