Pro-Beijing camp (Hong Kong)
The pro-Beijing camp, pro-establishment camp, pro-government camp or pro-China camp refers to a political alignment in Hong Kong which generally supports the policies of the Beijing central government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) towards Hong Kong. The term "pro-establishment camp" is regularly in use to label the broader segment of the Hong Kong political arena which has the closer relationship with the establishment, namely the governments of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). It is labeled the "Patriotic Front" by pro-Beijing media and "loyalists" by the rival pro-democracy camp. The pro-Beijing camp evolved from Hong Kong's pro-CCP faction, often called "leftists", which acted under the direction of the CCP. It launched the 1967 Hong Kong riots against British colonial rule in Hong Kong and had a long rivalry with the pro-Kuomintang bloc. After the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in 1984, affirming Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong from 1997, the traditional leftists realigned itself and unofficially formed a loose "United Front" with the conservative pro-business elites to counter the emergence of the pro-democracy camp in the 1990s and ensure a smooth transition of the Hong Kong sovereignty in Beijing's interest. Since