Liberal Party (Hong Kong) - Definition and Overview

Liberal Party (自由黨) is a political party in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People's Republic of China. The party is known for its moderate and business-friendly policies.

In July 6 2003, James Tien the leader of Liberal Party resigned from the Executive Council of Hong Kong and forced the government to delay the second reading of the legislation to implement Article 23 of the Basic Law. It was a sharp turn from his usual pro-government policy and was praised as heroic in temporarily relaxing a big conflict between the government and the pro-democracy camp supporters.

However, at almost the same time, Liberal Party decided to change its policy from "all Legislation members should be directly elected in 2007" to "Hong Kong should become more democratic." The founder and ex-chair of Liberal Party, Allen Lee Peng-fei, decided to leave the party since he believed the change was against public sentiments. Their stance in universal suffrage is similar to that of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB); namely, universal suffrage should be implemented on or after 2012 rather than 2007/8.

The Liberal Party saw its greatest success in the 2004 Legislative Council elections. With its success in gaining seats from the geographical constituencies through direct elections while retaining those seats in the functional constituencies, the party had its number of seats increased from seven (in 2000 elections) to ten, overtaking the Democratic Party for the first time to become the second-largest political party in the legislature.

See also

• Politics of Hong Kong
• Hong Kong Legislative Council elections, 2004

External link

• Official website (http://www.liberal.org.hk/liberal_dev/index.htm)

Example Usage of Liberal