Civic Passion

Civic Passion
熱血公民
Chairman Cheng Chung-tai
Vice-Chairman Alvin Cheng
Founded 29 February 2012
Headquarters Kowloon Bay, Hong
Kong
Newspaper Passion Times
Ideology Localism
Nativism[1]
Radicalism[1]
Right-wing populism[2]
Political position Right-wing[3]
Colours      Yellow
Legislative Council
1 / 70
District Councils
0 / 458
Website
www.facebook.com/civicpassionpage
Civic Passion
Traditional Chinese 熱血公民
Literal meaning "hot-blooded (passionate) citizens"
Civic Passion founder Wong Yeung-tat.

Civic Passion (Chinese: 熱血公民) is a radical,[1] populist,[2] and nativist[1] political group in Hong Kong. Founded and led by activist Wong Yeung-tat until 2016, it holds strong "localist" views and "militant" approach of protest, opposes the involvement of the Chinese central government in the governance of Hong Kong and has called for the downfall of the Communist Party of China.[4] The current leader of the group is its sole legislator Cheng Chung-tai.

History

Founding

The group was founded on 29 February 2012 by Wong Yeung-tat.[5] Wong Yeung-tat was a candidate for the electoral alliance People Power (a radical democratic political party) during the 2012 Legislative Council election in Kowloon 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 an internet activist group, it runs Passion Times (Chinese: 熱血時報), an organisation that publishes printed materials and broadcast internet radio programmes and which has over 300,000 Facebook followers. The group's app was banned in China's Apple App store during the 2014 Hong Kong protests.[6] During the protests, its website suffered distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, during which Passion Times claims its website was hit with up to 200,000,000 requests per second.[7]

Activism and Umbrella Movement

Civic Passion takes a radical view towards the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China and against the large influx of mainland tourists and new immigrants to Hong Kong. Due to these anti-mainland sentiments, the group has been accused of xenophobia, nativism and advocacy of Hong Kong independence by the pro-Beijing camp and even by mainstream democrats.[8]

Civic Passion criticises the moderate pan-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 in Tsim Sha Tsui against the annual vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown held by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China of the pan-democracy camp as they accused it of being under the theme of Chinese 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.[9][10]

During the 2014 Hong Kong protests, Civic Passion was one of the constituent groups of the Umbrella Movement. One of its activists, nicknamed "Frenchman", allegedly instigated the forced entry into the Legislative 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.[11] The group also allegedly tried to gain control of the main stage of the Admiralty site and confronted the campaign leadership after the pan-democrats condemned the attack on the LegCo building.[12]

In early 2015, it organised anti-parallel trading protests with another localist group Hong Kong Indigenous against the growing influx of mainland Chinese shoppers engaging in parallel trading in early 2015, aggressively picketing the alleged shoppers and having clashes with the police.[13] After the third demonstration, the central government said it would restrict Shenzhen residents to one visit a week.[1]

2015/16 elections

In the 2015 District Council election, Civic Passion fielded six candidates, of which five ran against the pro-democratic Democratic Party, but did not win any seat. However, Democrat heavyweight Albert Ho lost his seat in Lok Tsui to pro-Beijing lawyer Junius Ho with a margin of 125 votes while Civic Passion candidate Cheng Chung-tai took 391 votes.[14]

In the 2016 Legislative Council election, Civic Passion formed an electoral alliance with Proletariat Political Institute's Wong Yuk-man and Hong Kong Resurgence Order's Chin Wan. The electoral alliance set their platform Chin's "City-state theory", amending the current Basic Law of Hong Kong to maintain the Hong Kong's "city-state" status with the means of a de 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 in New 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.[15]

Leadership

Leader

Chairman

Vice-Chairman

Performance in elections

Legislative Council elections

Election Number of
popular votes		 % of
popular votes		 GC
seats		 FC
seats		 Total seats +/− Position
2016 122,140Steady 5.63Steady 1 0
1 / 70
 1Increase 10thIncrease

District Council elections

Election Number of
popular votes		 % of
popular votes		 Total
elected seats		 +/−
2015 3,006Steady 0.21Steady
0 / 431
 0Steady

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Sataline, Suzanne (18 May 2015). "Meet the Man Who Wants to Make Hong Kong a City-State". Foreign Policy.
  2. 1 2 Buckley, Chris; Wong, Alan (26 October 2014). "Pro-Democracy Movement's Vote in Hong Kong Abruptly Called Off". New York Times.
  3. ↑ "Hong Kong's angry young millennials: an interview with Joshua Wong". Open Democracy. 1 November 2015.
  4. ↑ Ending the party … with thought power?, SCMP, 12 June 2014
  5. ↑ Organisers say 510,000 people take to the streets for July 1 march, South China Morning Post, 1 July 2014
  6. ↑ Lee, Terrence (11 November 2014). "Anti-communist news site Passion Times banned from China's Apple App Store". Tech in Asia.
  7. ↑ passiontimes.hk brutally attacked by 200,000,000 requests per second, Passion Times, 16 November 2014
  8. ↑ "Commission on Strategic Development: Hong Kong's Relationship with the Central Authorities/the Mainland" (PDF). Central Policy Unit. Hong Kong Government. 26 May 2014.
  9. ↑ Ip, Kelly; Phneah, Jeraldine; NectarGan (5 June 2013) "Undampened". The Standard.
  10. ↑ Tiananmen massacre remembered at massive Hong Kong vigil, chinaworker.info, 6 June 2014
  11. ↑ Lau, Kenneth (20 November 2014). "Rioters linked to Mad Dog follower". The Standard. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
  12. ↑ Tsang, Emily; Sung, Timmy; Chan, Samuel (21 November 2014). "Split within Occupy deepens as splinter group challenges leadership". South China Morning Post.
  13. ↑ Chan, Kevin (2 March 2015). "Chinese shoppers latest target of Hong Kong protest anger". USA Today.
  14. ↑ "Out with the old: Two big-name pan-democrats ousted in tight district council election races". South China Morning Post. 23 November 2015.
  15. ↑ "黃洋達辭任熱血領導 黃毓民：樹敵多累選情". AM730. 6 September 2016.

External Links

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