Tung Chee Hwa

Tung Chee Hwa (Traditional Chinese: 董建華; Simplified Chinese: 董建华; Cantonese {{IPA2|təʊŋ35 kɪn33 wɑ11}}; Jyutping: dung2 gin3 waa4; Mandarin Pinyin: Dǒng Jiànhuá) (born July 7, 1937, or the 29th day of the 5th month in the Chinese calendar in Shanghai, China) was the first elected Chief Executive (July 1,1997–March 12,2005) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He took office on July 1, 1997 after the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China and was elected again to a second five-year term in 2002.

Election to the office of Chief Executive

In early 1997, Tung won a landslide victory over four other candidates in the election for the post of Hong Kong's first Chief Executive. The election, which many perceived as rigged from the start, was conducted by an electoral college of 400 voters, almost all of whom were anxious to curry favour with Beijing by supporting the anointed candidate of the Central Government. Tung subsequently took office as Chief Executive designate, with the assistance of a newly formed cabinet (Executive Council) and a few officers seconded from the then Hong Kong government to help in the preparation of the HKSAR government.

Related Topics:
Electoral college - Executive Council

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The government designate pledged to focus on three policy areas: housing, the elderly and education. Measures on housing included a pledge to provide 85,000 housing flats each year so as to resolve the problems of soaring property prices. The Asian financial crisis that hit Hong Kong in months after Tung took office made this objective almost immediately redundant and, in fact, it was a collapse in property prices that became a far more pressing problem in the years between 1998 and 2002.

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