Hong Kong Legislative Council election: shake-up in victorious pro-Beijing camp, with surprise losers, big winners and ‘elite newcomers’

Parties that only managed to hang on to the same number of seats as before, or even lost some, might see their influence diluted in the bigger 90-member Legco

Some parties won big, but new lawmakers with mainland Chinese links will be a group to watch

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The big winner in Sunday’s Legislative Council election was the DAB, which bagged 19 seats, up from 13. Photo: May Tse

Published: 12:05am, 21 Dec 2021Updated: 1:50am, 21 Dec 2021

Hong Kong’s pro-establishment parties emerged victorious in Sunday’s Legislative Council election, but observers warned that their influence could be diluted with the expansion of the legislature and the entry of lawmakers with mainland Chinese backgrounds.

One of the biggest surprises was the defeat of Liberal Party leader and incumbent lawmaker Felix Chung Kwok-pan, 58, who lost the seat he held since 2012 representing the textiles and garment sector’s functional constituency.

The party, dubbed the “bad boy” of the pro-establishment camp for sometimes opposing government policies, will still have four seats in the new Legco, the same as before, as vice-chair Michael Lee Chun-keung, 45, won a place in the Election Committee constituency.

Another party in the pro-Beijing bloc, the Business and Professionals Alliance for Hong Kong (BPA), also saw its number of seats shrink from eight to seven, after vice-chairman Christoper Cheung Wah-fung, 69, failed in his bid to represent the financial services sector’s functional constituency.

But both parties were quick to dismiss the suggestion their positions were weakened by the expansion of the Legco from 70 to 90 seats and the arrival of new elites elected on Sunday.

Liberal Party chair Tommy Cheung Yu-yan, 72, re-elected to represent the catering sector, said: “The new Legco will have a more balanced representation, and the Liberal Party has been good at communicating with various sectors to work out solutions to problems.”

In a similar vein, BPA honorary chairman Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen, 70, re-elected to represent an industrial sector, said: “We should not see it as a power-grabbing game. All parties and all legislators serve Hong Kong and the Hong Kong people.