Occupation BarristerPolitician Constituency New Territories East | ||
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Born 5 June 1981 (age 35)Hong Kong ( 1981-06-05 ) Nationality Canadian (until 2012)Hong Kong Alma mater Similar Holden Chow, Edward Leung, Christine Fong, Fernando Cheung, Leung Kwok‑hung Profiles | ||
Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu (Chinese: 楊岳橋, born 5 June 1981) is a barrister and politician in Hong Kong. He is the current Leader of the Civic Party and member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, representing New Territories East after winning the 2016 by-election.
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Background
Yeung was born in Yuen Long, Hong Kong in 1981 as the only child to a restaurant owner and a jewellery dealer. Yeung and his parents emigrated to Canada in the early 1990s after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. Yeung graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a degree in political science and obtained a master of laws in constitutional and administrative laws from the Peking University around 2003.
Political career
Inspired by the large-scale 2003 July 1 march, Yeung joined a group called “7.1 People Pile". He campaigned for Alan Leong Kah-kit, a barrister-turned-politician, in the 2004 Legislative Council election. In the following year, he joined the master of arts in legal studies program at the University of Bristol and became a certified barrister in 2008.
He joined the Civic Party in 2011 and ran in the 2011 District Council election in Tai Po Market but was defeated. He later elected to the Election Committee through the legal subsector in the Hong Kong Election Committee Subsector election, 2011. In 2012 Legislative Council election, he partnered with Ronny Tong Ka-wah to run in the New Territories East and successfully got Tong re-elected. He gave up his Canadian citizenship for the candidacy in the election.
Yeung is currently chairman of the New Territories East branch of the party and member of the Appeal Panel (Housing), and also co-host of the political talk-show “Teacup in a Storm” on D100 radio station.
He was recommended by Ronny Tong when Tong resigned from the Legislative Council in June 2015 to take up the seat in the February by-election. He retained the seat for the Civic Party by defeating Beijing-loyalist Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) candidate Holden Chow Ho-ding and localist Hong Kong Indigenous candidate Edward Leung Tin-kei, receiving 160,880 votes in the New Territories East constituency.
In the September general election, he sought for re-election in the New Territories East. Led in the opinion polls, he cooperated with Labour Party's Fernando Cheung who traced behind in the polls and later on with other pan-democrat candidates in order to split the votes evenly to maximise the chance to win seven out of the nine seats. He was re-elected with six other anti-establishment candidates by receiving 52,416 votes. After the election, he succeeded Alan Leong to become the acting leader of the Civic Party on 1 October. He was subsequently elected as party leader in November.