On May 27, the Civic Party announced its disbandment. Its chairman and co-founder, Alan Leong Kah-kit, said that once the formalities were complete, the party would “disappear from the world”. Its fate was sealed when nobody was willing to stand for chairman or the executive committee, leaving it without any leadership.

While acknowledging that the Civic Party had “not accomplished what we set out to do”, Leong said, “There is a time for everything.” He claimed that, since its foundation in 2006, the party had championed universal suffrage and the rule of law and had won over 70 Legislative Council seats in seven elections. 

However fine the ideals of the Civic Party may once have been, it showed itself wanting once the “one country, two systems” principle was challenged. Instead of supporting Hong Kong in its hour of need, its leaders identified themselves with China’s geopolitical rivals, treating Hong Kong as effectively collateral damage. Once they sought to harm their own city, the writing was on the wall not only for the Civic Party but also for the political system that spawned it.

Although, in the United Kingdom’s six-monthly report on Hong Kong, issued on May 25, the British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, bemoaned the redefinition of “key parts of ‘one country, two systems’” with “political plurality reduced almost entirely under the ‘patriots governing Hong Kong’ principle’”, he made no attempt to provide a context, let alone understand recent developments.

That context, however, is provided by the Civic Party, whose nefarious activities, which must never be forgotten, contributed significantly not only to the National Security Law for Hong Kong in 2020 but also to the electoral reforms of 2021.

On Sept 2, 2019, three of the party’s legislators — Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu (the party leader), Dennis Kwok Wing-hang and Kwok Ka-ki — wrote to US congressional leaders, urging them to enact into law “as soon as possible” the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, under which the US president could impose sanctions on Hong Kong and mainland officials (it was subsequently enacted, and officials were sanctioned).

On March 11, 2020, moreover, Kwok Ka-ki also said he would produce a list for the US government of Hong Kong officials regarding those whom sanctions could be imposed on. He was, therefore, actively colluding with a foreign government to harm his home city’s officials, which beggars belief (even Cleverly would find such conduct intolerable if it happened in the UK).

In August 2019, Yeung and Dennis Kwok visited the US. At a meeting in New York of the Asia Society, according to a Civic Party press release (dated Aug 27, 2019), they condemned “the police’s abuse of powers and brutality during the anti-Extradition Bill protests”, and “Alvin urged international organizations to inform relevant countries so that they would cease exportations of crowd control agents and provisions of trainings to Hong Kong Police Force”.

They were, therefore, at the exact time when the police in Hong Kong were doing their level best to control an insurrection which was causing massive damage and endangering life and limb, trying to weaken the police force. If they had succeeded in undermining the police force, the consequences for law and order in Hong Kong would have been catastrophic.

After leaving New York, Yeung and Dennis Kwok went to Montana to attend what their press release called the first “Hong Kong-United States Legislative Exchange”, at the invitation of the Department of State. They met with US political figures, and “Alvin and Dennis expressed their support towards the ‘Hong Kong Policy Reevaluation Act 2019’”, and the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act 2019”. Whereas the former act enables the US government to cancel Hong Kong’s special trading status with the US, the latter allows it to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and mainland officials. After their visit, both acts became law, and they were then used to remove Hong Kong’s trading benefits and to sanction both Hong Kong and mainland officials.

What Yeung and Kwok did, therefore, was to encourage the passing of legislation which was used to harm Hong Kong’s trade and hurt its officials, which was akin to traitorous conduct, but there was more to come.

In October 2019, Dennis Kwok, as deputy chairman, was required to preside over the election of a new chair for the Legislative Council’s House Committee, which controls bills and LegCo’s agenda. Although this should have taken no more than an hour, Kwok used his position to block the election, and, for 17 meetings over seven months, he prevented any progress, usually by allowing opposition legislators to make rambling speeches on irrelevant matters.

In consequence, until the impasse was finally broken on May 18, 2020, LegCo was unable to discharge its constitutional duties to enact laws under the Basic Law (Article 73). When asked why he did this, Kwok said he was afraid the government might try to “railroad” through national security laws and the national anthem law, both of which it was required to enact. Kwok, thus, was prepared to paralyze LegCo to prevent the progress of laws that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was obliged to enact, which was a gross abuse of power.

Although Kwok has fled the city, and is now lending support to various anti-China agencies abroad (including, most recently, the just-launched Hong Kong Watch Canada), his party colleagues are now facing the music. In 2021, four Civic Party core members — Alvin Yeung, Kwok Ka-ki, Jeremy Tam Man-ho and ex-district councilor Lee Yue-shun — were charged with subversion over their alleged roles in the unofficial primary to choose candidates to contest LegCo seats with a view to paralyzing LegCo, and their trial is currently underway.

As even Alan Leong must see, the Civic Party’s legacy was toxic for Hong Kong. Its legislators colluded with foreign powers to harm the city, they prevented the legislature from functioning, and they gleefully flouted Beijing’s red lines. They created a situation in which “one country, two systems” could have collapsed, and, instead of providing inspired leadership at a time of crisis, they showed themselves to be men of straw, blithely leading the gullible up the garden path.

Once, however, the Civic Party and its allies let Hong Kong down so badly, it was inevitable that the city would have to return to basics. In 1984, Deng Xiaoping explained that the principle of “Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong” needed to be implemented by patriots, and it was this that the likes of the Civic Party violated, to the city’s detriment. Deng meant that Hong Kong’s fortunes had to be guided by people who respected their country, supported China’s resumption of the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong, and who would never harm the city’s prosperity and stability. Until Cleverly can get his head around this, he can have nothing of any value to say about Hong Kong’s governance.

Although the Civic Party imagined it was bigger than “one country, two systems”, and could operate as a law unto itself, pride invariably comes before a fall. It tried to harm Hong Kong and diminish China, and it courted foreign friends who wished their country ill. It has now, however, arrived at its inevitable destination, the scrapheap of history.

The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.