The Kowloon City District Council (Chinese: 九龍城區議會) is the district council for the Kowloon City District in Hong Kong. It is one of 18 such councils. The Kowloon City District Council currently consists of 20 members, of which the district is divided into 2 constituencies, electing a total of 4 members, 8 district committee members, and 8 appointed members. The last election was held on 10 December 2023.
History
The Kowloon City District Council was established on 16 December 1981 under the name of the Kowloon City District Board as the result of the colonial GovernorMurray MacLehose's District Administration Scheme reform. The District Board was partly elected with the ex-officioUrban Council members, as well as members appointed by the Governor until 1994 when last Governor Chris Patten refrained from appointing any member.
The Kowloon City District Board became Kowloon City Provisional District Board after the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) was established in 1997 with the appointment system being reintroduced by Chief ExecutiveTung Chee-hwa. The current Kowloon City District Council was established on 1 January 2000 after the first District Council election in 1999. The council has become fully elected when the appointed seats were abolished in 2011 after the modified constitutional reform proposal was passed by the Legislative Council in 2010.
Riding on the anti-government sentiments following the historic July 1 protest, the Democratic Party took over the Progressive Alliance as the largest party in the 2003 pro-democracy tide by winning seven seats in total. Together with the Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood (ADPL), the pro-democrats won the plurality of elected seats only being balanced by the government-appointed seats. By the end of the term, the number of seats commanded by the Democrats reduced to three and lost their largest party status to the DAB. The DAB since has become the largest party in the district, taking control of the council with the recently emerged Kowloon West New Dynamic, a district-based group uniting the pro-Beijing independents under Legislative Councillor Priscilla Leung, who was also the District Councillor for Whampoa East.
In the 2015 election, the new localist group Youngspiration which evolved from the 2014 Hong Kong protests contested in the Kowloon City District, with Yau Wai-ching unsuccessfully challenged Priscilla Leung with a narrow margin and Kwong Po-yin successfully ousted the incumbent council chairman Lau Wai-wing.[2]
The pro-democrats scored a historic landslide victory in the 2019 election amid the massive pro-democracy protests, taking control of the council by securing 15 of the 25 seats. The Democratic Party emerged as the largest party, overtaking DAB with 10 seats.
Political control
Since 1982 political control of the council has been held by the following parties: