When did Hong Kong first get democracy?

It never did. Hong Kong has been integrated in China successive empires since the Qin dynasty (214 BCE), then become a colony of the British empire after the Opium war (1842), then was handed back over to the PRC in 1997. None of these regimes were democratic. There has been discussion about a possible transition since 1997, but there is zero prior history of HK being a democracy.

This text was originally published in quora.