John Tsang

John Tsang Chun-wah, GBM, JP (Chinese: 曾俊華; born Mui; born 21 April 1951) is a Hong Kong former senior civil servant and government official who was the longest-serving Financial Secretary of Hong Kong SAR to date, from 2007 to 2017.

Born in Hong Kong and raised and educated in the United States, Tsang received a bachelor's degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master in public administration from Harvard University. Tsang returned to Hong Kong and joined the government in 1982. He was the private secretary to the last colonial governor Chris Patten. After the handover, he served as Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology from 2003 to 2006 and as director of the Office of the Chief Executive in Donald Tsang administration from 2006 to 2007.

In July 2007, he was appointed Financial Secretary of Hong Kong by Donald Tsang. He proposed the Scheme $6,000 tax rebate to all Hong Kong residents in his 2011 Budget. He continued to serve as Financial Secretary in the Leung Chun-ying administration until January 2017, when he resigned to run in the 2017 Chief Executive election. Despite his lead in the opinion poll by large margin throughout the campaign, he lost the bid to Carrie Lam.

Tsang is currently engaged in a number of diverse activities. He is founder of Esperanza (a non-profit organisation), vice chairman of Ion Pacific (a financial institution that specialises in technology investments), senior advisor of Bowtie (a virtual insurance company), host of a weekly music programme on the private Commercial Radio, and fencing coach of the secondary school La Salle College.

Tsang was born on 21 April 1951 at Maternity home in Dukes Street, Kowloon Tong in Hong Kong, his great-grandfather was from Taishan, Guangdong, who made his fortune beginning as a labourer in San Francisco. His grandfather was a well-off Chinese physician-turned-businessman. His father, Tsang Chuek-ho, was the eldest child of eight siblings. Graduated from normal schools, Tsang Chuek-ho and his wife Li Pik-sheung planned to move to the United States, where his sister was living, through Hong Kong in the 1940s.

While waiting for the immigration process, the family settled in Hong Kong and had four children. Tsang Cheuk-ho and his children adapted the surname Mui when he was adopted by a relative in Hong Kong; they reverted to their original surname after emigrating to the United States. John Tsang, the eldest child, was born as Mui Chun-wah in Hong Kong on 21 April 1951 and lived in Sai Yeung Choi Street in his childhood.

Tsang was a primary and secondary school student at La Salle Primary School and La Salle College in Hong Kong. When he was 13 in 1965, Tsang and his family moved to the United States. He first resided on the 8th Street in Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York City. He enrolled in Stuyvesant High School the following year, from which he graduated in 1969. Eric Holder, the first African-American Attorney General of the United States, was his classmate. During the early 1970s in the United States, he was involved in the defend the Diaoyu Islands movement.

He then studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a master's degree in bilingual education from Boston State College and a Master in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.