CY Leung

The Honourable Leung Chun-ying GBM, GBS, JP 梁振英
3rd Chief Executive of Hong Kong
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 July 2012
Preceded by	Donald Tsang
Majority	689 electoral votes (57.4%)
2nd Convenor of the Executive Council
In office 1 July 1999 – 3 October 2011
Appointed by	Tung Chee-hwa Sir Donald Tsang
Preceded by	Chung Sze-yuen
Succeeded by	Ronald Arculli
Member of the CPPCC
In office 10th CPPCC 11th CPPCC
In office 16 March 2003 – 21 June 2012
Personal details
Born	(1954-08-12) 12 August 1954
Nationality	Hong Kong
Spouse(s)	Regina Tong Ching-yi
Children	Leung Chuen-yan Leung Chai-yan Leung Chung-yan
Alma mater	King's College Hong Kong Polytechnic Bristol Polytechnic
Occupation	Chartered Surveyor
Honorary Degree	DBA (PolyU) PhD in Business Administration (UWE)

Leung Chun-ying GBM, GBS, JP (born 12 August 1954), commonly known as CY Leung, is the third and incumbent Chief Executive and President of the Executive Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, assuming office on 1 July 2012.^[1][2] A politician of the pro-establishment bloc, Leung has held various political offices including Convenor of the Executive Council and Member of the Provisional Legislative Council before his victory in the 2012 Hong Kong Chief Executive Election, which won 689 electoral votes.

Early life

Leung attended secondary school at King's College. In 1974, he graduated from the Hong Kong Polytechnic (now the Hong Kong Polytechnic University) with a higher diploma in building surveying. After his graduation, Leung studied valuation and estate management at Bristol Polytechnic (now the University of the West of England) in the United Kingdom in 1977.^[3]

Leung returned to Hong Kong from the United Kingdom and joined real estate firm Jones Lang Wootton where he worked for 5 years.^[4] By the age of 30 he was made the chairman of the JLW branch in Hong Kong.^[4] Making a yearly salary of HK$10 million, he was given the nickname "Emperor of the working class" (打工皇帝) early in his career.^[4] In 1993 he opened his own surveyor company. By 2000 this company would merge along with Singapore's Dai Yuk-coeng company (戴玉祥) into DTZ Debenham Tie Leung Limited.^[5][6] From 1995 to 1996 Leung was the president of Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors. He was the past chairman of Hong Kong branch's Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He then became an honorary advisor of Shenzhen, Tianjian and Shanghai government on Land Reform. He is also the International Economic advisor for the People's government of Hebei province.^[7]

Early political career

From 1999 to 2008 he was a council chairman at Lingnan University.^[8] He was also chairman and member of the Council of the City University of Hong Kong.^[3] In 1985, he was elected member of the Hong Kong Basic Law Consultative Committee, and was later elected the Secretary General of the Committee.

In 1999 Leung was awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star.^[4] He was a member of the National Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference until he resigned a week before he assumed the post as the Chief Executive of Hong Kong in 2012.^[3][9] He is also the chairman, board of directors for the One Country Two Systems Research Institute.^[3]

In 2011, there were confrontations between police and demonstrators after the annual 1 July march amid public opposition to the government's draft legislation to eliminate by elections for vacated Legco seats. Leung responded by saying that such rowdy rallies should be "sanctioned and restrained".^[10]

Convenor of the Executive Council

Then-Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa appointed Leung as the convenor of the Executive Council in 1998, replacing his predecessor Chung Sze-yuen. During Tung Chee-hwa's 1997 policy address, he proposed that the government would build no less than 85,000 flats every year, allowing 70% of the citizens to own a house within 10 years.^[11] However, due to the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the proposal was put on a halt. As the convenor of the Executive Council, CY Leung has been questioned many times regarding this policy plan over the years.^[12] The citizen further said these policies favour the business (upper) class. Leung responded that the plan was something the government just projected at one time.

Chief Executive

Election campaign

On 28 November 2011, Leung officially announced his candidacy for Chief Executive of Hong Kong,^[13] two years after he had first hinted at his interest in the post.^[14]

The election campaign was controversial. The early favourite to win was long-considered to be former Chief Secretary Henry Tang, who was supported by the local bureacracy, key property and business tycoons, and crucially, by the Beijing government.^{[citation needed]} However, while Tang stumbled over the revelation of an illegal structure at his home, Leung faced his own problems.

During the campaign, rumours persistently resurfaced that Leung was once a closet member of the Communist Party of China. Section 31 of Chief Executive Election Ordinance (Chapter 569) stipulates that a CE election winner must "publicly make a statutory declaration to the effect that he is not a member of any political party". Martin Lee, a pro-democracy politician, questioned the survival of the 'one country, two systems' principle if Leung were to be elected the CE, saying that Leung must have been a loyal CCP member for him to be appointed as the Secretary General of the Basic Law Consultative Committee in 1985 at the young age of 31.^[15] This view was supported by a former underground communist, Florence Leung, whose memoir recorded that Leung was also a secret member of the party. She explained that in order for Leung to succeed Mao Junnian, whose identity as a communist had been revealed, as the Secretary General of the Basic Law Consultative Committee, he must also have been a party member, per the tradition of the party. She also cited Leung's vague remarks about the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre as a clue to his membership, in contrast to Henry Tang's greater sympathy for the protest movement.^[16] She said that if Leung, as an underground party member, won the election then the leader of the Communist Party in Hong Kong would be in actual control. Leung consistently dismissed such claims as ungrounded.^[17]

The suggestion that Leung's loyalty was more to Beijing than Hong Kong has long dogged him. In 2010, Leung had been asked whether he would support the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. He replied that China's former paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, should have been the first Chinese to win the award.^[18]

Towards the end of the election campaign, James Tien, the honorary chairman of the Liberal Party and a supporter of Henry Tang during the election, stated that members of the election committee had received phone calls from the Liaison Office demanding that they vote for Leung.^[19]

On 25 March 2012, Leung was declared Hong Kong's new Chief Executive,^[1] after securing 689 votes from the 1,200-member election committee. Henry Tang had 285 votes and the third candidate, Democrat Albert Ho gained the votes of 76 members. In total, 1,132 valid votes were received.

Upon his selection, the online version of People's Daily addressed Leung as "Comrade Leung Chun-ying". When the Chinese mass media pointed out that the title comrade (or tongzhi, 同志) is reserved by the party for its own members, and that neither Tung Chee-hwa nor Donald Tsang had been thus addressed, the epithet "comrade" was removed from the page.^[20]

After his selection, a number of illegal or unauthorised structures were found at Leung's house, in a reprise of the scandal involving an illegal basement that had badly hit the campaign of his rival, Tang, and for which Leung had roundly criticised Tang.^[21] The issue dominated the period around his taking up the post. Leung's structures were to be demolished although Chief Executive contender Albert Ho considered disputing Leung's legal legitimacy as the territory's new leader.^[22]

First term (2012–present)

Leung assumed office as Chief Executive on 1 July 2012. As well as the illegal structures controversy, there were other disputes over several of his appointments and actions. Fanny Law, Leung's campaign manager, was appointed to head the office of the CE-elect.^[23] Leung's appointment to his transitional office, of Chen Ran (陳冉) as his project officer, stirred criticism. Chen is a former General Secretary of the pro-CPC Hong Kong Y.Elites Association (香港菁英會), of which Leung is the patron. She is also the daughter of a middle-ranking government official in Shanghai, and a former member of the Communist Youth League who has resided in Hong Kong for less than seven years.^[24] Leung made his inaugural speech in Mandarin; not a word of Cantonese was spoken during the ceremony. This was in contrast to his predecessor, Donald Tsang, who in 2007 made his inaugural speech in Cantonese.^[25]

Once he became the chief executive job opportunities decreased, many mainlanders have received more social welfare, which made Hong Kong citizens feel dissatisfied and express their disappointment to him.^{[citation needed]} His poll has been continuously low since his election. Only 31 per cent of the 1,009 participants in the HKU poll said they supported Leung as the city's leader, while 55 per cent disapproved of him - an increase of 6 percentage points from last month's poll.^[26]

Personal life

Leung is married to Regina Leung Tong Ching-yee (aka. Regina Ching Yee Higgins) in 1981.^[27] The couple has two daughters and a son. His father was a Royal Hong Kong Police officer.^[4][28]

See also

• First term of CY Leung as Chief Executive of Hong Kong
• Politics of Hong Kong

References

External links

• Official website

v t e Chief Executive of Hong Kong Tung (1997–2005) Tsang (2005–2012) Leung (2012–)