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Hong Kong national security law
Hong KongPolitics

Former Occupy activist takes helm of Washington-based Hong Kong advocacy group

  • Alex Chow has been named the new board chairman of the two-year-old Hong Kong Democracy Council, succeeding Anna Yeung-Cheung
  • ‘It takes both daily local struggles and cross-regional policy advocacy to counter the … Chinese Communist Party’s tyranny,’ he says

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Activist Alex Chow, the new chairman of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, speaks during a rally in New York earlier this year. Photo: AFP
Jeffie Lam
A former student leader who rose to prominence during the 2014 Occupy movement has taken the helm of a Washington-based advocacy group, arguing that foreign lobbying is indispensable to what he described as the “long game” of preserving Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy.
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Alex Chow Yong-kang, now 31, has been named the new board chairman of the two-year-old Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC), succeeding Anna Yeung-Cheung, who has retired.

Currently pursuing a doctoral degree in geography at the University of California, Berkeley, Chow said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that it was his political responsibility to give his all for the city.

“Regardless of whether we are in Hong Kong, we all know we are in a long game,” said Chow, who was formerly the secretary general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students.

“It takes both daily local struggles and cross-regional policy advocacy to counter the expansion of [the] Chinese Communist Party’s tyranny.”

He added that the “international front” – a term commonly used by protesters to refer to foreign lobbying efforts – was not a magic solution, but was still essential to achieving “Hong Kong’s deliverance”.

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Brian Leung Kai-ping, who fled to the United States after he joined other protesters in storming the Legislative Council during the 2019 anti-government unrest, will now become the council’s new executive director, succeeding Samuel Chu, who resigned last month.
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