Hong Kong Must Face the CCP to Win Back Democracy: Activist

Protesters march on Hong Kong streets with a sign that reads "Resist Tyranny" during the annual rally on July 1, 2019. (Yu Gang/The Epoch Times)

A Hong Konger activist has called for the youth of Hong Kong to get involved with democracy and to face the realities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) if they want universal suffrage and real democracy.

Elmer Yuen—also known as “Papa Yuen"—an entrepreneur and political commentator who gained widespread respect in the pro-democracy Hong Kong community after the 2019 anti-extradition protests, told “Hong Kong’s Way Out” conference that an election-based parliamentary system is the foundation of any modern democracy.

In the Feb. 19 conference, Yuen emphasized the importance of young people taking action.

“You young people need to organize parties … Run in elections, organize parties … debate with others,” Yuen told Bonnie Wong in Cantonese.

Wong is a representative of the HongKonger Protection Against Chinese Expansion who attended the conference remotely.

“You debate, discuss, and vote in the parliament before finally making decisions, which will be the decisions of the Hong Kong people. [They’re] not the decisions by you or me, but by the parliament,” Yuen said.

He also mentioned that young people in Nanjing City gathered around the bronze statue of Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Republic of China and the first leader Nationalist Party of China, during the Chinese New Year, as a protest against the current CCP regime.

When asked how Hong Kong people could avoid the CCP, Yuen gave a direct and simple answer: “You can’t.”

“You can’t avoid it. Face it,” he said.

Protesters take part in a march during a demonstration in Hong Kong on Aug. 3, 2019. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

In 2019, millions marched peacefully against the Hong Kong executive’s proposed amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, which would have allowed Chinese agents to extradite Hong Kongers to mainland China freely. The protest grew in momentum until an estimated 2 million people took to the streets —a quarter of the city’s population.

The amendment was widely regarded as a breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and undermining of rule of law in the former British colony. Protestors and the authorities clashed in various venues, which led to Beijing’s further passing of the controversial Hong Kong National Security Law in 2020.

Yuen’s History with CCP

Elmer Yuen, an Hong Kong industrialist and CEO of Golden Bridge Technology Inc., started to advocate for democracy in Hong Kong in the international community after the anti-extradition movement in 2019.

In 2022, Yuen co-launched a group dedicated to establishing a Hong Kong Parliament and is therefore wanted by the pro-CCP Hong Kong authorities on account of “violating Hong Kong National Security Law and subverting state power,” making him the second Hong Kong resident who is not a Chinese national wanted based on the law.

Elmer Yuen, an anti-CCP entrepreneur addressed a “Hong Kong’s way out” conference held in Sydney, Australia on Feb. 19, 2023 (Cindy Li/The Epoch Times).

Yuen’s daughter-in-law Eunice Yung Hoi-yan, a Pro-CCP LegCo member, renounced her relationship with Yuen right after the launch of the committee, criticizing the Hong Kong Parliament as “a premeditated and malicious organization toward [the] Hong Kong government.”

“The group plans to subvert government functioning and undermine its administration,” Yung wrote in the statement. “I fully support the authorities to set examples and crack down on any illegal acts according to Article 37 of the National Security Law.”

Yuen, who migrated to Hong Kong from mainland China in his childhood, responded that this is nothing new in the various political movements launched by the CCP in the past seven decades.

“This used to happen in mainland China during the Cultural Revolution when they would get family members of somebody they planned to denounce to cut them off,” he said in August 2022.

“Personally, I don’t think it’s a big deal, but you have to understand that this is the CCP, something that we Hongkongers have never experienced before, so we think it’s a big thing.”

Hong Kong Has No Future if the CCP Does Not Collapse: Advocate

Meanwhile, fellow panellist Dr. Bin Lin, an advocate for Hong Kong democracy and media commentator, said that universal suffrage was promised by Beijing when it took Hong Kong back from the United Kingdom in 1997, yet if the autocratic regime in mainland China does not change, Hong Kong will never be free.

Dr. Bin Lin (M) ran as an independent candidate for the West Ward in Ryde council election in Sydney, 2021 (Supplied).

“The future of Hong Kong depends on the regime change in mainland China,” Lin said in Cantonese through remote video.

“Everyone wants a change, but how [things] will change, no one knows. If mainland China does not change, there will not be a future for Hong Kong.”

Lin, who has a Ph.D. degree in political science from the University of New South Wales, mentioned that in 2019, around 40,000 people signed up on a petition concerning Hong Kong’s situation to the former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. However, after the news fell out of the media cycle, not many people remain concerned.

He said that he hopes overseas Hong Kong people can adhere to the “Lion Rock spirit“ of perseverance and solidarity, which is shown by young people in the anti-extradition protests in 2019.