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Tung Chee-hwa (Traditional Chinese: 董建華 Simplified Chinese: 董建华 Pinyin: Dǒng Jiànhuá) (born July 7, 1937, or the 29th day of the fifth month in the Chinese calendar) is the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He took office on July 1,1997 after the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China. He was elected uncontested to a second five-year term in 2002.
Before the handover Tung was known as a conservative businessman with traditional Chinese values and strong connections to the People's Republic of China. His first term was hampered by the Asian financial crisis and criticism of his style of governance, which was often characterized as over-reliant on PRC approval. As a result he was frequently subject to attack and ridicule by pro-democracy activists and legislators, the media and academics, who portrayed him as a puppet of Beijing. Dissatisfaction among the public towards Tung has grown consistently throughout his tenure and culminated in huge protests in 2003 after the outbreak of Sars and the Article 23 controversies, when sloganeers demanded Tung to step down.
Earlier life
Born in Shanghai, Tung's family moved to Hong Kong when he was 10 and his father, Tung Chao Yung, went on to become a successful entrepreneur in the shipping sector. After the death of his father, Tung, as the elder son, took over his father's business.
However, with the decline of the shipping industry and Tung's failure to diversify, the business foundered. According to some accounts, the then PRC government, through Tung's friend Henry Fok Ying-tung, propped up the business by handing his company contracts on arms shipments. Some further speculate that Tung, whose family was once pro-Kuomintang, became loyal to the PRC government in return for this assistance.
Election to the office of Chief Executive
In early 1997, Tung won a landslide victory in the election for the first term of Chief Executive, out of four candidates, by an electoral college of 400 voters. Tung subsequently took office as Chief Executive designate, with the assistance of a newly formed cabinet (Executive Council) and a few officers seconded from the then Hong Kong government to help in the preparation of the HKSAR government.
The government designate pledged to focus on three policy areas: housing, the eldery and education. Measures on housing included a pledge to provide 85,000 housing flats each year to resolve the problems of soaring property prices. Of course, the Asian crisis made this objective almost immediately redundant and collapsing property prices were, in fact, a far more pressing problem in the years between 1998 and 2002.
First term
Tung formally took office on July 1, 1997, with initially high popularity among the public. Nevertheless, a few months after, the regional economy deteriorated rapidly after the Asian financial crisis. With job losses and plummeting values in the stock and property markets, people started to lose faith in Tung and the HKSAR government. Some commentators attributed the plunge in the property market to his counter-indicated home-building initiative.
During Tungs first term the government came up with a number of reform proposals and plenty of grand infrastructure projects were proposed, including a technology park, a science park, a Chinese medicine centre and a Disney theme park. But too often his administration was seen as bungling, particularly during the confusion of the first days of the new airport, the mis-handling of the avian flu epidemic, education reforms (including teaching in the mother tongue (Mandarin) and mandatory English examination for teachers), the Right of abode issue, and the disagreement of his political views with the popular then Chief Secretary, Anson Chan. Tungs popularity plummeted with the economy.
Second term
Accountability system
In an attempt to resolve the difficulties in governance, Tung reformed the structure of government substantially starting from his second term in 2002. In a system popularly called the Principal Officials Accountability system, all principal officials, including the Chief Secretary, Financial Secretary, Secretary for Justice and head of government bureaux would no longer be politically neutral career civil servants. Instead, they would all be political appointees chosen by the Chief Executive. The system was protrayed as the key to solve previous administrative problems, notably the cooperation of high ranking civil servants with the Chief Executive. Under the new system, all head of bureaux became members of the Executive Council, and came directly under the Chief Executive instead of the Chief Secretary or the Financial Secretary. The heads of the Liberal Party and Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, two pro-government parties, were also appointed into the Executive Council to form a so-called "ruling alliance".
Crisis of governance in 2003
The first major move of Tung in his second term has been to push for legislation to implement Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law in September 2002. However, the initiative drew a hostile response from the pro-democratic camp, lawyers, journalists and human rights organisations. This stoked public concerns that the freedoms they enjoyed would deteriorate. The sentiment, together with other factors such as the Sars epidemic in early 2003, when the government was criticised for its slow response, strained hospital services and the high death toll, resulted in the largest mass demonstration since the establishment of HKSAR, with an estimated 350,000 - 500,000 people marching on 1 July 2003. Many demanded Tung step down.
In response to the protests, the leader of the Liberal Party, James Tien, resigned from the Executive Council, signifying the withdrawal of the party's support for the bill implementing Article 23. As a result, the government had to postpone and later withdraw the bill from the legislative agenda. A few days later, Regina Ip, the then Secretary for Security who was responsible for implementing Article 23, resigned for personal reasons. Another Principal Official, Finance Secretary Antony Leung, who earlier suffered from a scandal over his purchase of a luxury vehicle weeks prior to the his introduction of a car sales tax, resigned on the same date.
It was the most serious crisis of Tung's administration and some considered it a break-up of the short-lived ruling alliance. The events also boosted civil awareness among the public and the popularity of the pro-democratic camp. Tung's government has subsequently encountered difficulties in implementing many of its policies.
Subsequent developments
During the debate over the constitutional development, although the target was primarily the PRC government, Tung was criticised as not reflecting effectively the views of the pro-democratic camp to push for 2007/08 universial suffrages to the PRC government.
Tung's cabinet suffered another blow in July 2004 when another Principal Official, the Secretary for Health, Welfare & Food Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, resigned to take political responsibility over the public outcry towards the government's handling of the Sars outbreak in 2003, after the release of the investigation report of LegCo over the issue.
Lately, the economy inproved so people have more work opportunities. Therefore they have less time to protest. In the latest protest against Tung, there were only a few thousand protesters.
See also
Tung Chee Wah has just issued his new Policy Address last week.
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