Tung Chee-hwa: Misunderstood visionary or failed leader?

(Edited and refined by Candice Chan, with the assistance of AI translation.)

Hong Kong’s first chief executive Tung Chee-hwa died on 8 September aged 89. His tenure was marked by a succession of crises, from the Asian financial crisis and the SARS outbreak to mass protests, and ultimately ended with his resignation on health grounds. Yet in recent years, Tung has increasingly come to be seen as a leader who was ahead of his time in pushing for reform in Hong Kong.

Tung’s office announced in the early hours of 9 September that he had died peacefully in hospital at around 10pm on Tuesday, with his family by his side. Following news of his death, Beijing, the Hong Kong government and the pro-establishment camp issued statements expressing their condolences and paying tribute to his record during his nearly eight years in office.

Tributes

China’s official Xinhua news agency described Tung as an “outstanding contributor to ‘one country, two systems’, a renowned patriot, an outstanding social activist and a close friend of the Communist Party of China”.

Leung Chun-ying, vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and also a former Hong Kong chief executive, paid tribute to Tung on social media in the early hours of Wednesday, praising his foresight in planning for Hong Kong’s long-term development and tackling deep-seated livelihood issues.

Incumbent Chief Executive John Lee also wrote on social media that Tung had shown great foresight in putting mechanisms in place to foster closer economic and trade ties and coordinated development between Hong Kong and mainland China, laying important foundations for the city’s long-term competitiveness.

Tung’s legacy

Tung came from a business background and said early in his career that he had never really liked politics. Yet following Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule in 1997, he became the city’s first chief executive and found himself steering Hong Kong through major crises, including the Asian financial crisis and the SARS outbreak. Many of the policies introduced during his tenure proved highly controversial, among them mother-tongue education, civil service pay cuts and his government’s decision to ask China’s National People’s Congress to interpret the Basic Law amid a dispute over the right of abode.

One of his most controversial policies was his “85,000” housing plan. Seeking to address soaring property prices before the handover and the difficulties ordinary Hong Kong residents faced in buying their own homes, Tung pledged in his first Policy Address in 1997 to build 85,000 housing units a year, with the aim of bringing property prices down to more affordable levels. But the Asian financial crisis struck soon after the policy was announced, sending Hong Kong’s property market tumbling. Many homeowners were plunged into negative equity, fuelling widespread public resentment. In a media interview in 2000, Tung acknowledged that the 85,000-unit policy “no longer existed”.

Tung also put forward a number of long-term initiatives aimed at developing new industries during his time as chief executive. These included plans for Cyberport and a “Chinese Medicine Port”, reflecting his ambition to turn Hong Kong into a hub for information technology and traditional Chinese medicine. Cyberport, however, was criticised as a property development project dressed up as a technology initiative, with critics alleging collusion between the government and business interests. The Chinese Medicine Port, meanwhile, soon disappeared from the policy agenda.

The greatest political controversy of Tung’s tenure, however, was his government’s attempt to enact national security legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law. The government released a consultation document in 2002, prompting widespread public concern. Nevertheless, it pressed ahead with the legislation and planned to table the bill in the Legislative Council on 9 July 2003. Against the backdrop of an economic downturn following the SARS outbreak, the controversy culminated in as many as 500,000 Hong Kong residents taking to the streets on 1 July, ultimately forcing the government to withdraw the bill.

Following the massive 1 July protest, Beijing introduced the Individual Visit Scheme, allowing mainland tourists to travel independently to Hong Kong, while the mainland and Hong Kong signed the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), among other measures. Hong Kong’s economy soon rebounded, but public discontent persisted. On 10 March 2005, Tung announced that he had tendered his resignation to the central government, citing health problems and pain in his foot. He stepped down more than two years before his term was due to end.

After leaving office, Tung was appointed by Beijing as a vice-chairman of the CPPCC, allowing him to remain influential in political and business circles. He founded the China-United States Exchange Foundation and became actively involved in China-US relations. In Hong Kong, he also established the think tank Our Hong Kong Foundation, which researches a wide range of policy issues, while Tung himself continued to speak publicly from time to time on political matters.

Assessment of Tung today

Chung Kim-wah, former deputy head of the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, told an overseas Hong Kong media outlet that Tung’s greatest weakness was his lack of political experience. Chung pointed to Tung’s use of an intermediary to pressure the University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Programme to stop conducting opinion polls on the chief executive and the Hong Kong government, describing it as an early example of the erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms under his administration. He argued that subsequent chief executives had largely followed Tung’s example, adopting similar tactics to exert pressure on academic freedom.

Lau Siu-kai, a consultant to the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies who served as head of the Hong Kong government’s Central Policy Unit during Tung’s administration, offered a different assessment. Speaking to Lianhe Zaobao, Lau said Tung’s business background meant that he was not bound by the cautious, bureaucratic mindset of the traditional civil service and was willing to pursue forward-looking policies. “For example, he saw that Hong Kong was too dependent on finance and property and that its economy lacked diversity. After taking office, he pushed for economic diversification, particularly the development of innovation and technology.”

Lau also noted that the British colonial government had long pursued a policy of non-intervention in the economy. After taking office, Tung sought to move Hong Kong away from the “small government, big market” philosophy and towards a model in which the government played a more proactive role. But the civil service did not fully support his approach, prompting him to introduce the Principal Officials Accountability System during his second term.

Lau described Tung as a leader with considerable long-term strategic vision. But in the early years after Hong Kong’s return to China, he said, the opposition camp was powerful, the civil service did not fully support his administration, the economic environment was unfavourable, and Tung himself lacked political finesse. As a result, many of his policies never came to fruition. Developments in recent years, however, had vindicated much of Tung’s thinking, Lau argued. “On a scale of one to ten, I would rate him an eight.”

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “香港首任特首董建华逝世 晚年被视为改革先行者”.

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