Tung Chee-hwa died peacefully on Tuesday, aged 89, with family beside him, his office said. He was the first leader of Hong Kong after British rule ended in 1997, and by most accounts he was not very good at it.
A shipping tycoon with little political experience, Tung was picked for the job by a panel of pro-Beijing elites. Many believed Beijing saw a loyalist who would follow orders. There was another reason for suspicion: Chinese state-run banks had helped rescue his family’s ailing shipping firm, Orient Overseas Container Line, during a global slump in the 1980s.
Crises, one after another
He worked long hours, enough to earn the nickname “7-11”. His political touch was clumsy, though, and he came across as indecisive just as the problems piled up. A less kind nickname followed: “Old Dumb Tung”.
Soon after he took office, Hong Kong recorded the first known human cases of bird flu, and a financial crisis swept across Asia and battered the economy. His handling of both drew wide criticism. His distrust of the media did not help, and policy gaffes made him the butt of jokes.
The pro-Beijing electoral committee re-elected him unopposed in 2002. A year later SARS killed nearly 300 people in the city, and his government was accused of a sloppy, sluggish response. Later in 2003 he proposed an anti-subversion law, known locally as Article 23 legislation. An estimated half a million people marched against it, and the government scrapped it.
In 2004 Hong Kongers marched again, this time demanding direct elections for the city’s leader and the whole legislature. Tung sided with the Communist leadership, which refused. The rally became an annual event for pro-democracy supporters.
On March 10, 2005 he confirmed he was leaving, insisting that failing health, not pressure from Beijing, was the reason. “If I continue as chief executive, I won’t be able to handle it,” he said. Many doubted him, since no health problems had been apparent in the preceding months.
Life before and after office
A 2005 biography says he was born in Shanghai on May 29, 1937, and that his family moved to Hong Kong in 1947. In 2017, notably, he told mainland media his birthday was July 7. He studied marine engineering at the University of Liverpool, graduating in 1960, then worked for General Electric and the family business in the United States before returning to Hong Kong in 1969.
After leaving office he started a think tank and stayed a Beijing loyalist. During the 2019 democracy protests, as they raged in September, he was one of 42 people given national medals and honours by Xi Jinping at a ceremony in Beijing, recognised for devoting himself to the “one country, two systems” policy. A national security law followed in 2020, and the mass protests that once challenged him disappeared. Hong Kong passed its own Article 23 security law in 2024. Tung had not been seen at public events for several years.
