Democratic Party (Hong Kong) - Party Beliefs

Party Beliefs

From the outset, the party supported the restoration of Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong. However, since the Handover it has consistently stressed the "two systems" part of the "one country, two systems" principle. The party's stance on Hong Kong's future development differs from that of pro-Beijing parties. It believes Hong Kong must develop more democratic institutions and preserve freedoms and human rights in order to achieve prosperity.

The party proposed policies on various areas of governance through designated spokespersons, including:

• Amendment of the Basic Law to achieve more democracy and safeguard freedoms, while achieving closer economic cooperation with Mainland China.
• Protection of human rights.
• Maintain Hong Kong's status as an international finance and trade centre and improve its economic infrastructure (concrete details not given), as well as a more flexible way to control public expenditure.
• Better monitoring of public services and utilities (i.e. more accountability), and strengthened measures to protect the environment.
• More resources for education, with less vague policies.
• Reasonable (i.e. larger) share of economic achievements by the employee for the employee, and increased involvement by the Government to protect labour laws in accordance with social needs.
• Adopt measures to regulate property prices from fluctuation, and provide adequate public housing
• Increase spending on social welfare.
• Universal suffrage by 2012 (before December 2005, 2007/8).

Overall, the Democratic Party advocates economic policies pretty close to "liberalism" in the sense of John Rawls (rather than, say, of Robert Nozick or Friedrich Hayek, as commonly accepted outside North America), in sharp contrast with the traditional radical free-market orientation of Hong Kong. However, this point is rarely mentioned in the speeches held by party members during their trips abroad to seek political support. The party's position on social or cultural issues is not well-defined but verges on the conservative, partly due to sizeable support from Catholic constituents. In a way that may seem contradictory to traditional liberal ideology, the party generally opposes the legalization of commercial sex or gambling operations.