Benny Tai Yiu-ting (Chinese: 戴耀廷; born 12 July 1964) is a Hong Kong legal scholar, political figure, and democracy activist.

[7] In July 2020, Tai was fired by the University of Hong Kong, his long-time employer, citing the criminal conviction he incurred for his role in the 2014 pro-democracy protests, known as Occupy Central.

"[3] On 16 January 2013, Tai wrote an article entitled "Civil Disobedience's Deadliest Weapon" on Hong Kong Economic Journal which sparked public debate.

In the article, Tai postulated a non-violent civil disobedience seven-step progression to pressure the Hong Kong government to implement genuine full democracy: 10,000 participants signing a declaration (taking a vow and pledge of willingness to occupy the streets), live TV broadcast of discussions, electronic voting on methods for universal suffrage, a referendum on the preferred formula, resignation of a "super-seat" Legislative Council member to be filled in a by-election to be seen as a referendum on the plan, civil disobedience, and, finally, Occupy Central in July 2014 if the plan was rejected by the Beijing government.

[8] He and sociology scholar Chan Kin-man and pro-democracy priest Reverend Chu Yiu-ming founded the Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) on 27 March 2013.

[11] In response to the decision on constitutional reform proposal of the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) which set the restrictive framework on the electoral method of the 2017 Chief Executive election, Tai announced the official start of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace civil disobedience campaign on 28 September 2014 after the student activists' storming of the forecourt of the government headquarters led by Joshua Wong on the last day of the class boycott campaign.

[13][14] On 3 December 2014, the Occupy Central trio, along with 62 other key figures turned themselves in to the police, admitting taking part in an unauthorised assembly as originally planned.

University of Hong Kong principal law lecturer Eric Cheung Tat-ming and criminal defence lawyer Jonathan Midgley described the charges as "not at all common".

Tai's plan hit its setback when the Neo Democrats decided not to support the proposed coordinating mechanism for the District Council (Second) super seats in May.

It drew a large number of voters to vote for the candidates who were on the brink of losing as shown in the polls from other candidates, which resulted in the high votes received by fresh faces Eddie Chu, Lau Siu-lai and Nathan Law at other veteran democrats' expenses including Lee Cheuk-yan, Cyd Ho and Frederick Fung who failed to retain their seats.

[21] In a seminar in Taipei organised by the Taiwan Youth Anti-Communist Corps in March 2018, Tai was recorded making an argument that following the end of "dictatorship" in China, the country's various ethnic groups could exercise their right to self-determination and decide how they could link up with each other.

Hong Kong member of the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) Tam Yiu-chung asked if it was still appropriate for Tai to keep his job at HKU.

[26] In April 2017, Tai proposed the "Project Storm" to win the majority of the District Council seats for the pro-democrats in the 2019 Hong Kong local elections.