Background Chin was born in Hong Kong in 1961. His father, a
Traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, was born in Malaysia and came to Hong Kong in 1950. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1986. He later studied in Germany, obtaining a doctorate in ethnology from the
University of Göttingen in 1995. He returned to Hong Kong and worked at the Policy Research Institute between 1995 and 1996 and was a senior advisor to the HKSAR government on cultural, arts, and civic affairs from 1997 and worked as research director in the
Home Affairs Bureau until 2007. Chin became one of the leading critical intellectual voices against the destruction of local communities and historical edifices that occurred in the course of urban redevelopment. Many of the newspaper columns, which he wrote under the pen name Chin Wan, supported the young radicals who took an increasingly militant stance against Hong Kong and Chinese real estate tycoons and Beijing's intervention in Hong Kong.
"Godfather of localism" In 2011, Chin published the book
On the Hong Kong City-State. His analysis of what he considered China's "neo-imperialist" stance in Hong Kong, and his repositioning of the democracy movement in "
localist camp" terms, triggered fierce public debate and was popular among the young generation. Chin emphasised the significance of Hong Kong autonomy for the sake of
Hongkongers. "What we Hongkongers need is not a democratic China, but to build Hong Kong into an autonomous city-state first, merging the British culture with a restored Chinese culture," wrote Chin. He suggested that Hongkongers should push for a "
Chinese Confederation" consisting of separate and parallel states in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. In 2014 he made a remark on Facebook saying that "the
Communist Party cannot slaughter Hong Kong men, nor can it publicly rape Hong Kong women. So it uses soft methods to send the mainland vagina to Hong Kong. With the roles of wife, lover and prostitute, the vagina and uterus of Hong Kong women are scrapped." He became the advisor of an autonomy organisation. More radical elements took his idea further, expressing a yearning for the bygone days of
British rule, waving colonial flags,
2016 LegCo bid He joined an
electoral alliance with
Civic Passion led by
Wong Yeung-tat and incumbent legislator
Wong Yuk-man to contest in the
2016 Legislative Council election after a localist activist
Edward Leung of
Hong Kong Indigenous received a better-than-expected result in the
2016 New Territories East by-election in which Leung grabbed more than 66,000 votes. Chin contested in the
New Territories East with the slogan of "creating a de facto referendum in five constituencies; allow all citizens to participate in the creation of constitution". Chin's list received 23,635 votes, four percent of the total votes, ranking 13th place and was not elected. On 2 March 2021, Chin stated on Facebook that he and some Hong Kong youths established a new party —
Hong Kong Civile Party. ==See also==