Tung Chee-hwa

Tung Chee-hwa GBM (Chinese: 董建華; born 7 July 1937) is a Hong Kong businessman and retired politician who served as the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong between 1997 and 2005, upon the transfer of sovereignty on 1 July. He served as a vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) between 2005 and 2023.

Born as the eldest son of Chinese shipping magnate Tung Chao Yung, who founded Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), Tung took over the family business after his father's death in 1981. Four years later, OOCL teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, and the business was saved by the People's Republic of China government through Henry Fok in 1986.

He was appointed an unofficial member of the Executive Council of Hong Kong by the last British Governor Chris Patten in 1992 and was tipped as Beijing's favourite as the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR. In 1996, he was elected the Chief Executive by a 400-member Selection Committee. His government was embroiled with a series of crises, including the bird flu and the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In 2002, he was re-elected without competition. In 2003, more than 500,000 protesters demanded Tung to step down in the light of the proposed legislation of the Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23 and the SARS outbreak. Tung resigned in the middle of his second term on 10 March 2005.

After his resignation, he was appointed vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference by the Beijing government and formed the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) in 2008 to influence public opinion towards China in the United States. In 2014, he founded a think tank Our Hong Kong Foundation consisting of the membership of numerous leading tycoons. He remains influential in Hong Kong politics and is dubbed as "kingmaker".

Tung was born in Xuhui District, Shanghai on 7 July 1937, 29th day of the fifth lunar month in 1937 in the Chinese calendar into an influential shipping magnate family of Tung Chao Yung. Tung Chao Yung was the founder of the Orient Overseas Container Line, a shipping company which was closely associated with the government of the Republic of China. His younger brother, Tung Chee-chen, was ranked as the 23rd wealthiest man in Hong Kong in 2009, worth US$900 million. In January 2008, Tung and his family were ranked (also by Forbes) as the 16th wealthiest in Hong Kong, with a total value of US$3 billion.

In 1949 during the Chinese Communist Revolution, when Tung was 12 years old, Tung's father moved the family to Hong Kong. His father remained close to Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government on Taiwan, in which the logo OCCL has been plum blossom, the national flower of the Republic of China. In the 1950s, Tung attended the Chung Wah Middle School, a leftist school later shut down by the Hong Kong colonial government in the light of the 1967 Hong Kong riots. He was sent abroad to study at Liverpool University, leaving him with a lifelong passion for the Liverpool Football Club. He graduated from the university with a Bachelor of Science degree in marine engineering in 1960. From Liverpool he was sent to the United States to work as an engineer at General Electric in Massachusetts, and then for the family business in New York. He also lived in San Francisco before he returned to Hong Kong in 1969.

All of Tung's children hold American citizenship.

He joined his father's business upon his return to Hong Kong in 1969 and gradually took over the leadership of the family enterprise. He took over his family business in 1982 when his father died. However, in 1985, his company was heavily in debt and teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Henry Fok, a pro-Beijing businessman took initiative and helped Tung's family, with the support of the Beijing government.