Tung Chee-hwa, the first chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, died on the evening of September 8 at the age of 89. Once his office confirmed the news, Beijing moved quickly to set the tone the very next day. Xinhua described him as an outstanding contributor to "one country, two systems," a prominent patriot, an accomplished social activist, and a "close friend of the Chinese Communist Party."
Tung's life happened to span Hong Kong's most dramatic institutional transformation, from a business tycoon during the twilight of British colonial rule, to the territory's first chief executive after the 1997 handover, to a long-serving vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) after leaving office, and finally an elder statesman of "one country, two systems" in Beijing's eyes.
He rose from a shipping dynasty, earned deep trust from Beijing, steered Hong Kong through a smooth transition, took on speculators during the Asian financial crisis, and pushed forward economic ties with the mainland, all cast as the model of a patriot devoted to both country and city. As of this writing, Beijing has not announced who will attend Tung's funeral. Xinhua only issued its official obituary on the afternoon of September 9 Taipei time, after unconfirmed word of his death had already begun circulating.
An Experiment That Began With Great Promise And Ended In Deep Political Rifts
On July 1, 1997, Tung Chee-hwa was sworn in as the first chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In his inaugural address that day, he painted a strikingly optimistic picture of Hong Kong's future, one where Hong Kongers would become masters of their own destiny, and the new government would preserve the city's way of life, its free and open economic system, the rule of law, and gradually build a more democratic society.
Looking back today, those words carry a certain historical irony. Six years later, Tung's government pushed forward legislation for Article 23 of the Basic Law, which ultimately triggered one of the largest political demonstrations Hong Kong had seen since the handover, with roughly 500,000 people taking to the streets. The bill was shelved, and Tung's political standing went into a steep decline from that point on.
For Beijing, national security is an inseparable part of sovereignty. But for many Hong Kongers, the version of "one country, two systems" they understood at the time of the handover meant Hong Kong would retain a considerable degree of freedom, rule of law and autonomy.
What makes the story more striking is that the 2003 Article 23 legislation was never completed at the time, yet 23 years later, Hong Kong finally passed the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance in 2024. In 2003, Hong Kong still had large-scale street politics, active opposition parties and a highly vibrant public discourse. By the time the national security law arrived in 2020, followed by electoral reform in 2021 and the Article 23 legislation in 2024, Hong Kong's political landscape had fundamentally changed.
Tung was born in Shanghai, the son of shipping magnate C.Y. Tung, and grew up in Hong Kong. He studied at the University of Liverpool in England, worked at General Electric in the United States, and later took over his family's shipping business. His father's shipping empire had deep ties spanning Taiwan, Hong Kong, the United States and mainland China. After leaving office, Tung moved further into the outer circle of China's political core, serving for years as a CPPCC vice chairman. He even accompanied Xi Jinping, who would later become China's top leader, on a visit to the United States, playing something of a bridging role back when U.S.-China relations had not yet fully soured.
After 1997, Beijing needed to prove that "one country, two systems" was more than a political slogan, that it was a governing framework that could actually function. The 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 2003 SARS outbreak, property and economic troubles, and the Article 23 controversy, nearly every thorny problem of Hong Kong's early post-handover years landed within his seven years in office.
Looking back today, Hong Kong's securities and futures industry still credits him for staying close to industry concerns and public sentiment during the financial crisis. Current Chief Executive John Lee, paying tribute to Tung, described him as someone who devoted his life to "serving the country and serving Hong Kong," praising his work on economic recovery, mainland cooperation and international exchange. Third-term chief executive Leung Chun-ying praised Tung as "warm-hearted and persuasive through reason," highlighting his long-term planning for Hong Kong's development and its deep-rooted livelihood issues.
The "deep-rooted livelihood issues" Tung once hoped to solve never disappeared simply because the political order changed, and Hong Kong's anxieties over housing, the wealth gap, upward mobility for young people, and identity have all persisted. And the other question he ran into in 2003, how Hong Kongers themselves would come to understand "one country, two systems," has become the central question running through Hong Kong politics for more than two decades since.
The Market Rescue And The Housing Pledge, Two Sides Of The Same Man
In August 1998, international speculators attacked the Hong Kong dollar's currency peg, and the Hang Seng Index plunged nearly 60 percent within a year. Tung authorized then-Financial Secretary Donald Tsang to deploy roughly HK$118 billion from the Exchange Fund to intervene in the market, buying up 33 constituent stocks of the Hang Seng Index. The operation, remembered as Hong Kong's fight against speculators, ultimately drove off the attackers and is regarded as a defining moment in safeguarding the city's financial stability. The Tracker Fund of Hong Kong, created afterward, became the pioneer of Hong Kong's ETF market. Hong Kong's securities and futures industry associations have also noted that during the contentious removal of minimum brokerage commissions, Tung remained attentive to the livelihoods of small industry players and won them some breathing room.
But during that same period, his "85,000" housing policy, a pledge to build 85,000 housing units a year, collided head-on with the bursting of the property bubble, leaving hundreds of thousands of households in negative equity and becoming the deepest source of public resentment during his tenure. In 2005, he resigned early citing "leg pain," ending a term of more than seven years. That explanation became something of a political punchline in Hong Kong at the time, and in hindsight it also hinted at how fragile the early elite politics of "Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong" really were, personal health became the most convenient exit whenever a gap opened up between public opinion and Beijing's expectations.
The "foresight" and "resolving deep-rooted problems" that Chinese officials emphasize today register differently in Hong Kongers' collective memory, more like a ledger of offsetting entries: on one side, successfully defending the currency peg and the city's status as a financial center, and on the other, housing policy missteps and the chaotic early years of the accountability system, including the 2002 penny stocks crash that wiped out small-cap shares.
Why Does The Close Friend Label Sting So Much Right Now
Tung represented the kind of ideal intermediary figure envisioned when "one country, two systems" was first designed, someone fluent in international rules yet willing to accept central leadership, someone with deep local business roots yet able to hold a dialogue with Beijing. During his tenure, he pushed through the merger and listing of the Hong Kong stock exchange, the launch of the Growth Enterprise Market, and closer economic ties with the mainland, laying groundwork that would later shape Hong Kong's turn toward the mainland market.
But precisely because he was Beijing's "close friend," his death forces a reckoning with a hard reality: the governing model built around the "patriotic businessman" archetype has since transformed dramatically. From Tung Chee-hwa to Leung Chun-ying, Carrie Lam and John Lee, the role of chief executive has gradually shifted from a local elite coordinator into something far more explicitly a central government representative.
His political career carried both deep trust from Beijing and enormous backlash on Hong Kong's streets, both crisis management during a financial meltdown and the political scars left by the Article 23 controversy, both a long-standing place within China's political system and an international businessman's insistence on Hong Kong's global role.