{"id":8741,"date":"2016-02-26T18:59:47","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T10:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=8741"},"modified":"2016-02-26T20:06:08","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T12:06:08","slug":"nt-east-byelection-christine-fong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2016\/02\/nt-east-byelection-christine-fong\/","title":{"rendered":"District Councillor Christine Fong hopes to strike lucky second time around"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christine Fong Kwok-shan fights LegCo by-election on \u2018independent\u2019 platform<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Stanley Lam<\/strong><\/p>\n

Her election flyers feature a picture of a teenaged Christine Fong Kwok-shan playing the role of the boy-deity Nezha, holding two golden rings and a fire-tipped spear. In Taoist folk tales, Nezha rides through the sky on \u201cwind fire wheels\u201d and defeats\u00a0the Dragon King.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9040\"<\/a>
Christine Fong Kwok-shan campaigning in Sha Tin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But in real life, says the former child actor turned engineer and district councillor, her feet are placed firmly on the ground. And she is hoping her down-to-earth approach will win bring her success in Sunday\u2019s New Territories East by-election.<\/p>\n

Fong says her strategy of reaching out to people in their everyday life helped her to get elected to the Sai Kung district council in 2011 with a whopping 87 per cent of the vote. This time, she is also running on livelihood issues such as proposals to \u00a0improve the railway network and enhance transport connections in the North District.<\/p>\n

Standing as an independent, she explains her campaign slogan \u201cthird power\u201d means \u201cNot parroting, not blindly following what others do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Fong struck out on her own, she \u00a0joined the Liberal Party in 2004. She says she was running a small business at the time and did not see anyone representing small and medium sized enterprises. \u201cThe development of small and medium enterprises in Hong Kong is very narrow, I wished to do something for them,\u201d explains Fong.<\/p>\n

However, she quit the party in 2010 after falling out with chairman James Tien Pei-chun. Fong says the party was very different to what she had expected. \u201cThey didn\u2019t really have commitment to society, they were too opportunistic, treating it as a business,\u201dshe says.<\/p>\n

As for the Mong Kok clashes, Fong believes it was a result of accumulated public anger. She says there is a huge divide between Hong Kong\u2019s young people and the older generation. \u00a0\u201cThose who are aged in their sixties and seventies experienced hard times so they want stability and peace now. Although there is a generation gap between myself and teenagers, I can understand them and feel for them as I also stand in the front line,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Fong says she will communicate more with young people and that she is empathetic to their experience of being beaten by police in protests.<\/p>\n

As for her chances in Sunday\u2019s polls, Fong says she is confident she can \u00a0get at many more \u00a0of the votes than she received in the 2012 Legislative Council Election, when she got 24,594 votes.<\/p>\n

The other candidates are Wong Sing-chi, Holden Chow Ho-ding, Leung Sze-ho, Wilson Lau Chi-shing, Leung Tin-kei and Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu.<\/p>\n

Edited by Kelly Wong<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Positioning herself as a voice for small business owners and ordinary Hongkongers, Christine Fong Kwok-shan hopes to win over voters in the New Territories East by-election by claiming the hotly contested middle path between the pan-democrats and pro-establishment parties. She’ll be hoping her name recognition as a district councillor and former actor will give her an edge over rivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[421,107],"tags":[88,423],"class_list":["post-8741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-territories-east-by-election-2016","category-specials","tag-elections","tag-legco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8741"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8758,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8741\/revisions\/8758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}