When Yeung Sum co-founded the city's largest pro-democracy party more than 30 years ago, he knew building a democratic Hong Kong would be a “difficult dream”. Still, it was not impossible.
Today, his Democratic Party is moving towards dissolution, a symbolic marker of the diminishing Western-style civil liberties and high degree of autonomy that the ruling Communist Party in Beijing promised to keep intact in the former British colony for at least 50 years when it returned to China in 1997.
Pro-democracy protests that paralysed Hong Kong in 2019 led to a crackdown that has all but silenced dissent through restricted elections, media censorship and a China-imposed national security law that saw some of Mr Yeung's party members jailed. Dozens of civil society groups closed down.
