The Wan Chai District Board was replaced by the Wan Chai Provisional District Board after the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) was established in 1997 with the appointment system being reintroduced by Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa.

Due to its continuing shrinking in size, the government in 2015 decided to transfer Tin Hau and Victoria Park constituencies from the Eastern District Council to Wan Chai.

The conservative control was interrupted between 2003 and 2007, when the pro-democrats and their allies took advance of the anti-government sentiment of the 2003 July 1 march in which the newly established Civic Act-up under Legislative Councillor Cyd Ho became the largest party in the council in the 2003 election and make nonpartisan Ada Wong Ying-kay the council chairwoman.

The pro-democracy council lasted for one term until the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) retook its largest party status in the 2007 election while Civic Act-up lost all their seats.

[2] The 2019–20 pro-democracy protests brought a historic landslide victory to the pro-democrats in the November election with members of the local political group Kickstart Wan Chai who all ran as independents won numbers of seats, ousting long-time pro-Beijing incumbents and took control of the council for the first time since 2003 election.