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Ng Kang-chung

Depending on one’s perspective or position, Hong Kong’s polarising leader Leung Chun-ying, who has announced he is not running for a second term, is either a “cunning wolf” or a loyal down-to-earth government servant.
Commonly called CY, the city’s chief executive is often referred to by the unflattering nickname “689” – an allusion to the number of votes Leung received in the 2012 chief executive election from the 1,200-member Election Committee dominated by pro-Beijing loyalists.
The figure has also been invoked to symbolise his lack of a popular mandate.
During his tenure, Leung has been credited with stopping pregnant mainland women coming to give birth in Hong Kong. He also imposed a ban on parallel trading of baby milk powder across the border to safeguard the supply of infant formula for Hong Kong mothers.
Watch: Leung Chun-ying will not seek for a second term


Leung has also boosted housing supply and cracked down on property speculation to cool the market.
The latest progress report of his administration’s work over the year, published in July, estimated the total number of public housing flats generated while he was the city’s leader stood at about 97,100.
But these achievements have done little to boost his popularity.

Leung’s popularity rating when he was elected in March 2012 was 51.5 out of a possible score of 100, according to the University of Hong Kong’s public opinion programme. His popularity peaked at 56.5 in May 2012, but dropped to 36.2 in May this year. In late October, it was 39.2.
Speculation was rampant when Leung ran in 2012 that he was not Beijing’s first choice to become chief executive.
The early front-runner was former chief secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen, the son of a wealthy Shanghai industrialist who was said to have had the backing of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin. But his campaign was derailed following the revelation that he had a large illegal basement, dubbed by some an underground palace, in his home.
To his supporters, Leung is a working-class hero. He was born in 1954 to a police officer father and won a scholarship to prestigious King’s College. From there he studied at what is now Polytechnic University and later at Bristol Polytechnic in England, working part-time at a takeaway food shop to fund his studies.

As a young surveyor at British real estate consultancy Jones Lang Wootton, Leung formed part of a small group of Hong Kong professionals who would regularly make their way across the Lo Wu border in 1979, a year after the mainland started down the path of opening up and reform. He gave lectures on market economics and other topics to mainland officials in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Guangzhou and Shanghai.
Since the late 1970s, he has participated in the mainland’s land and housing reforms. Between 1984 and 1997, he was involved in preparatory work for Hong Kong’s handover and the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In 1988, at just 34, he became secretary general of the Basic Law Consultative Committee.
Because of his long association with mainland authorities, rumours have persisted that he is secretly a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.
After the handover, he was appointed to the Executive Council and became the convenor of its non-official members between 1999 and 2011.

Executive councillor Cheung Chi-kong, a staunch Leung supporter, said
he had known Leung for more than 10 years. He claimed the chief executive was often misunderstood as being “too stern”.
“He is rather serious, but I haven’t seen him scolding others,” he said. “I’ve never seen him lose his temper.” He also called him “a man with a will as strong as steel and iron”.
“You might say he isn’t sociable. He doesn’t have lunchtime friends,” he added. “When he asks me to lunch, it’s always a working lunch – meeting while eating. As a politician, it might be seen by some as a shortcoming. But some might also see it more positively, that he is independent.”
Former lawmaker Lau Ping-cheung, who was deputy head of Leung’s 2012 campaign, claimed the chief executive’s trump card was the trust he had from the central government.
“Beijing wants a chief executive that it can trust absolutely, someone with the same thinking and philosophy as the central government,” he said. “In my opinion, Leung completely fulfils this requirement.”

The sternest test Leung has faced was the Occupy movement of 2014 during which protesters gathered outside government headquarters in Tamar to call for universal suffrage. Clashes led police to use batons and tear gas.
The crisis ended up elevating Leung’s standing in the eyes of Beijing. In November 2014, at the height of the street demonstrations in Hong Kong, President Xi Jinping met Leung on the sidelines of the Apec forum in Beijing.
Xi praised Leung, citing a line from an ancient poem that translates as “strong winds revealing the strength of sturdy grass”. He commended the chief executive for his resilience in handling the protests, calling him “reliable in critical times”, according to media reports quoting unnamed sources.
The pro-democracy protests lasted 79 days and ended after police cleared the last remaining protesters and reopened roads.
Leung might be a bland Beijing loyalist, but his family has turned out to be a source of colourful news.
In June 2014, his daughter Chai-yan posted a picture on her Facebook page appearing to show cuts on her wrist. In the posting, she wrote: “Will I bleed to death?” She was then 22 years old, studying law in London.

The chief executive and his wife flew to visit her, and the three released a photo of themselves in Hyde Park. Chai-yan later wrote on Facebook that the picture was a poor public relations stunt.
While Leung stayed relatively quiet on the matter, his wife, Regina Leung Tong Ching-yee, had a harder time containing herself after Chinese University political scientist Ivan Choy Chi-keung blasted the couple for using their daughter for, in his words, making a political point. He said that “even a vicious tiger would not eat its cubs”. The chief executive’s wife hit back and accused Choy of being “shallow, ignorant, cold-blooded and unfeeling”.
Chai-yan, back in Hong Kong last year, gave media interviews and described her relationship with her parents as troubled, claiming they judged her friends and “care a lot about superficial things” like how her friends did academically, their family backgrounds and their parents’ jobs.
She later expressed interest in a show-business career, but it did not materialise. Film director Wynn Lau Chun-fai, who claimed to have signed her for a film, said he lost contact with Chai-yan amid speculation her parents did not want her to work for him given his history of producing adult films.
Another controversy arose in March last year when Chai-yan claimed she was abused by her mother and had been locked up. Taking to social media, she threatened to “leave home forever”.
The chief executive’s other daughter, Chung-yan, triggered a separate controversy for Leung in March this year when she reportedly left her hand luggage in the departure hall of Hong Kong International Airport after passing through a security checkpoint to board a flight to San Francisco.
Chung-yan reportedly phoned her father for help, and Leung allegedly exerted pressure on an airline employee to help retrieve the bag, violating security guidelines. Leung and the Airport Authority denied the allegations.


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Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying: Cunning wolf or loyal government servant?

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying was considered to be a Beijing loyalist. Photo: David Wong

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's daughter Leung Chai-yan attend a Cable TV programme.

Leung Chun-ying (R) claps his hands after he knows that he won the Chief Executive election in Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai. Leung's opponent Henry Tang Ying-yen (L) stands next to him. 25MAR12

The police fire tear gas to protesters in Admiralty after "Occupy Central" was officially launched in the early morning on Sep28. 29SEP14

TUNG CHEE-HWA (LEFT) AND LEUNG CHUN-YING ATTEND THE 6TH TERM OF THE HONG KONG PREPARATORY COMMITTEE MEETING IN BEIJING.

Leung Chun-ying, a member of the Basic Law Consultative Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying: Cunning wolf or loyal government servant?

Chief executive managed to polarise society, but he also had admirers