Former vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and former chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Tung Chee-hwa, who played a pivotal role in establishing the HKSAR’s political stability after 1997, passed away from illness on Tuesday, at the age of 89. His passing calls for more than a moment of public mourning. It calls for a disciplined reconsideration of a statesman whose historical importance lies in the difficulty of the office he first occupied, the constitutional order he helped set in motion, and the burdens he accepted at a decisive point in Hong Kong’s modern history.
Tung was not merely the first chief executive of the HKSAR. He was the first public figure required to transform the promise of a new constitutional settlement into functioning government. That distinction is fundamental. Later administrations could rely on precedent, institutional memory, administrative experience, and a public more familiar with how the Basic Law worked. Tung governed before those advantages existed. Every official act had to be measured against Hong Kong society’s expectations, the central authorities’ authority, and the attention of the international community. The new administration had to prove that the new constitutional institutions could be accompanied by order, continuity, and confidence.
For that reason, the first obligation of his government was constitutional before it was political. Hong Kong in 1997 did not require dramatic gestures. It required steadiness, legal clarity, and institutional confidence. The SAR had to be protected from instability, while the ordinary life of the city had to continue without rupture. Tung’s contribution was helping Hong Kong residents to understand that these two aims were not in tension. Preserving Hong Kong’s separate system depended precisely on its place within the nation’s sovereign structure. One country was not an obstacle to two systems. It was the constitutional foundation that made two systems lawful, credible, and sustainable.
This was the central discipline of his leadership. A returned Hong Kong could not be governed as if sovereignty were only symbolic. Nor could the new order be reduced to a continuation of old institutional habits under different political language. Tung accepted that the SAR’s legitimacy required respect for the constitutional order established by the Basic Law. His style was often cautious, but caution in a founding moment can be a form of public responsibility. By placing constitutional loyalty before short-term applause, he helped give the new order its first working rhythm and reduced the danger that ambiguity would become institutional weakness.
Tung’s economic thinking should be understood from the same long view. He recognized that Hong Kong’s prosperity depended not only on property cycles, financial intermediation, and inherited commercial advantage, but also on fostering innovation and technological development. His proposals on Cyberport, traditional Chinese medicine development, and high-tech industries reflected a larger concern: Whether Hong Kong could move from trading value created elsewhere to creating new value through knowledge, research, and productive capacity, ensuring long-term economic resilience.
The importance of that vision was not immediately recognized. Some critics treated these initiatives as premature or too far removed from Hong Kong’s established business culture. Yet strategic judgment should not be measured only by immediate popularity. Leaders concerned with the next generation must sometimes identify necessities before society has developed the language to describe them. Today, as Hong Kong gives greater attention to innovation, technology, and participation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Tung’s earlier thinking appears less like a set of isolated projects and more like an early map of economic transformation. He understood that Hong Kong’s long-term strength would depend on its ability to connect international capital, national scale, scientific knowledge, and regional cooperation.
This economic vision also carried a deeper political meaning. Integration with national development was not simply a commercial option but a strategic necessity rooted in Hong Kong’s return to the motherland. A city that had resumed its place within the country could not define its future by distance from the mainland. Tung’s policy direction quietly anticipated that balance-seeking: strengthening Hong Kong’s regional integration while preserving its international character by locating openness within a broader Chinese horizon, where the city’s advantages could acquire renewed strategic purpose.
The crises of his tenure tested these convictions under severe pressure. The Asian financial crisis struck almost immediately after the establishment of the SAR. It threatened currency stability, investor confidence, and social trust. In ordinary times, a passive government may claim fidelity to market principles. In extraordinary times, passivity may amount to abdication. Tung’s administration treated financial stability as a public duty because the collapse of confidence in a young constitutional order would have carried consequences far beyond the market. The decision to defend stability showed an understanding that economic security and constitutional confidence were closely connected.
The SARS outbreak in 2003 posed a different and more intimate trial. It brought fear into hospitals, homes, schools, and workplaces. It exposed administrative limits and placed immense strain on a government still consolidating its authority. Tung was under heavy pressure, but leadership during crisis is not judged only by approval. He continued to bear responsibility while public anxiety deepened. He did not stand apart from the city’s suffering. His popularity diminished, but his sense of public obligation remained.
Tung’s record should therefore be judged by scale rather than noise. He governed at the intersection of transition, public anxiety, and crisis. Few leaders are tasked to carry such burdens at the birth of a new constitutional order. His administration had imperfections, as all founding administrations do. The durable judgment is that he steadied Hong Kong’s first passage after return, defended the constitutional ground on which its high-degree autonomy rests, and looked beyond the old economic formulas that once seemed permanent. His service belongs less to the politics of applause than to the architecture of continuity. In that quieter and more enduring sense, his place in Hong Kong’s modern history remains secure.
The author is a solicitor, a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area lawyer, and a China-appointed attesting officer.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
