Harmony and Discord: Development of Political Parties and Social Fragmentation in Hong Kong, 1980-2017

This paper seeks to examine why political parties in Hong Kong are fragmented and how the development of political parties in Hong Kong leads to social discord. Political parties started to emerge in Hong Kong in the 1980s. They had a golden opportunity to develop in the 1990s due to political reform, but why are political parties in Hong Kong still small, weak, with poor reputations and weak support? The author points out five factors that lead to the malfunction of political parties in Hong Kong. Although some factors are caused by the political parties themselves, the author argues that they are, all in all, constitutional or institutional factors, as they are long-term restraints directly set by the government since the colonial era. Due to the failure of party development in Hong Kong caused by constitutional and institutional restraints, the author will also discuss how this failure has lead to the political and social discord in the past two decades since the handover and the future