[6] In the 2016 Legislative Council election, the Civic Passion formed an electoral alliance with Wong Yuk-man's Proletariat Political Institute and Chin Wan's Hong Kong Resurgence Order.

Due to these anti-mainland sentiments, the group has been accused of xenophobia, nativism and advocacy of Hong Kong independence by the pro-Beijing camp and even by mainstream democrats.

In 2013 and 2014, the group organised an alternative 4 June rally in Tsim Sha Tsui against the annual vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown held by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China of the pan-democracy camp as they accused it of being under the theme of Chinese nationalistic sentiment.

[13] The group also allegedly tried to gain control of the main stage of the Admiralty site and confronted the campaign leadership after the pan-democrats condemned the attack on the LegCo building.

[17] In the 2016 Legislative Council election, Civic Passion formed an electoral alliance with Proletariat Political Institute's Wong Yuk-man and Hong Kong Resurgence Order's Chin Wan.

Cheng vowed to switch the party from "militant" street action to parliamentary path with community groundwork and pulled out from social activism entirely.

[citation needed] After protest erupted in mid-2019, the rift between Civic Passion and pro-democracy bloc still existed, as shown in House Committee brawl and National Anthem Bill debates.

All pro-democracy legislators resigned to protest against the "unlawful" act, but Cheng and unaligned Pierre Chan announced their decision to stay, intensifying the disagreement between two sides.