Democratic Party (Hong Kong)

The Democratic Party (DP) is a liberal political party in Hong Kong. Once the flagship party in the pro-democracy camp, it is expected to dissolve within 2025 after the party was unable to enter elections with national security threshold imposed.

The party was established in 1994 in a merger of the United Democrats of Hong Kong and Meeting Point in preparation for the 1995 Legislative Council election. The party won a landslide victory, received over 40 percent of the popular vote and became the largest party in the legislature in the final years of the British colonial era. It opposes the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen protests of 1989 and called for the end of one-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); the party has long been seen as hostile to the Beijing authorities.

Led by Martin Lee, the Democratic Party boycotted the Provisional Legislative Council on the eve of the Hong Kong handover in 1997 in protest to Beijing's decision to dismantle the agreed transition, but reemerged as the largest party in the first SAR Legislative Council election of 1998. Due to the Beijing-installed proportional representation voting system, the Democrats embattled in bitter factional conflicts in the early post-handover era. Although the party's popularity briefly rebounded after the 2003 pro-democracy demonstration, its dominance was gradually eclipsed by the emergence of the new parties.

As a response to the electoral gains of the Civic Party and the League of Social Democrats, the Democratic Party merged with Emily Lau's The Frontier in 2008. The party made a surprising move by negotiating with the Beijing officials over the constitutional reform package in 2010. It resulted in a catastrophic split within the pro-democracy camp. Being ferociously attacked by the radical democrats, the party sharply lost support in the 2012 Legislative Council election, retaining only six seats. Afterwards, the Democrats underwent a rejuvenation process in which most veterans retired and made way for the new generation in the 2016 election.

Following the widespread anti-government movement in 2019, the party won a landslide victory in the local elections. After the imposition of the Hong Kong national security law in July 2020 and subsequent disqualifications of four pro-democracy camp legislators, all legislator of the party, along with the whole camp's, resigned in protest. It left the party with no representation for the first time since 1998. In January 2021, the leading party seniors were arrested under the security law. Majority of the district councillors resigned in July 2021 after reports of possible disqualification for not upholding the Basic Law. The party did not run in any elections thereafter, which were limited to government-approved "patriots" only. Despite remaining a low profile in the later years, the party reportedly face pressure from Beijing and eventually started preparing to dissolve in 2025.