How the Mong Kok riot shocked a rising Hong Kong political star into action

A barrister-at-law for the past eight years, Eunice Yung Hoi-yan was content to focus on her career and community work. But two events caused a change of heart.

The first was this year’s Mong Kok riot. The second was the constant filibustering by pan-democrats in the Legislative Council.

She felt she needed to take a stand and so joined the New People’s Party, mostly because she admired founding leader Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee. But she also agreed with Ip and deputy leader Michael Tien Puk-sun’s vision of politics of “telling the truth, doing things pragmatically and not engaging in politicking”.

There was an urgent need to restore Hong Kong’s fading glory, she said, and solve young people’s social mobility problems.

A rising star of the party, she is targeting the New Territories East a constituency, a pan-democrat stronghold, saying: “We are offering a new choice and hope ... We want to ‘win back Hong Kong’.”

“Things have been too politicised in recent years ... Instead of stalling and backlogs in Legco, we want to move forward ... and go back to the high international status that Hong Kong used to enjoy.”