Lau Chin Shek
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Lau Chin Shek (Chinese: 劉千石, born 12 September 1944 in Guangzhou, Guangdong with family root in Shunde, Guangdong) is the President of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions and a Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee. He was born in Guangzhou and had a secondary school education. He has been a member of the Legislative Council since 1991.
Lau smuggled from Guangzhou to Hong Kong in 1960. Since 1980s, he has been a labour activist throughout his adult life. Since the seventies, he has been helping factory workers in Sham Shui Po and Cheung Sha Wan areas of Kowloon. Working conditions were poor in those days. Mr Lau helped formed trade unions and bargained for better conditions for these workers.
During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Lau and other pro-democracy activists expressed sympathy and support to the student demonstrators who had gathered at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. He and others also founded The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, which led mass rallies in Hong Kong in the summer of 1989.
In 1990, Lau and other labour activists, including Lee Cheuk Yan, established the 160,000-strong Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions. With his popularity, Mr Lau ran for direct elections of the Legislative Council in 1991, and won a convincing victory in the polls, and was re-elected in the subsequent elections. He and Lee, who was a member since 1995, brought the voices of pro-democracy workers into main stream politics.
Lau was re-elected three times and has been a lawmaker for more than a decade, except a brief period during 1997 and 1998, when the sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred to the People's Republic of China, and the Legislative Council temporarily became a Provisional Legislative Council which was filled with people indirectly hand picked by Beijing.
In recent years, however, Lau has moderated his stance against Beijing. He was expelled from the Democratic Party (Hong Kong) in 2000 because of having an identity of two parties. Once branded subversive by the central authorities, Mr Lau had been barred from entering mainland China for more than a decade. In May 2000, after quiet lobbying by Hong Kong top leaders, he was allowed to make a low-key visit to Guangzhou to see his ailing mother. Since then, he has been urging his pro-democracy colleagues to have "better communication with the Central Government" and visit mainland China and see for themselves the changes that are taking place in the country.
