The Pro-Beijing Camp, pro-Establishment Camp, pan-Establishment Camp (Chinese: 親北京派, 親建制派 or 建制派) is a segment of Hong Kong society that supports the policies and views of the People's Republic of China before and after the handover of Hong Kong in 1997.
It is also nicknamed the royalists or loyalists.
The term can be used to identify politicians, political parties and individuals. They are rivals of the pro-democracy camp.
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Some of the political groups within the Pro-Beijing camp, such as the Foundation of Trade Unions and some members in the current Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) have had a long history of strictly following the instructions of the PRC and of loyalty to the CCP since the colonial period, even during the Cultural Revolution. Some of the members formerly participated in the Hong Kong 1967 Leftist Riots against colonial rule, and were labeled leftists.
After the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, a group of pro-Beijing businesspeople and elites formed several new political parties, including the Liberal Democratic Federation and the Progress Alliance. Despite this the pro-Beijing camp was defeated by the pro-democracy camp in the Legislative Council elections of 1991 and 1995.
However the PRC government argued that the electoral reform introduced by Chris Patten had violated the Joint Declaration and thus they no longer felt obliged to honour it. A parallel Legislative Council, the Provisional Legislative Council, was formed in 1996 under the control of the Pro-Beijing camp, this became the Legislative Council upon the founding of the new SAR government in 1997.
Since 1997, more new political groups have been formed. With their support within the functional constituencies, the Pro-Beijing camp have never lost being the majority in the LegCo, controlling the LegCo through a collaboration of the DAB and the Hong Kong Liberal Party, the elitist party from the colonial period. On 1 July 2003, a peaceful crowd of 500,000 protested [1]against the introduction of the controversial Article 23 of the Basic Law. James Tien, the leader of Liberal Party and member of the Executive Council forced the government to delay the second reading of the bill, however the stance of the DAB on Article 23 was strongly criticised and led to their losses in the Hong Kong district councils election, 2003.
Pro-Beijing camp members are united by the political ideology of being closer to Beijing, as much out of pragmatism as of conviction, but vary on other issues within the context of Hong Kong.
Number of LegCo members in brackets.
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