Lau Wong-fat

Lau Wong-fat,

In 2009, he was appointed by Chief Executive Donald Tsang to the Executive Council, the highest advisory council of the Hong Kong government where he served until 2012. For this, together with his extensive ownership of land and property, he was known as the "King of the New Territories" (新界王) or the "Land Emperor of the New Territories" (新界土皇帝).^[4] He died in 2017 at the age of 80.

Early life and rural politics

Lau was born in the village of

His longstanding membership of the rural committee was as village representative for Lung Kwu Tan. For many years unopposed, in January 2011, he faced the village's approximately 600 voters, after a challenge following the controversy of his failure to disclose some of his property holdings. He and his ally won comfortably, with even the defeated young candidates claiming "I just want to learn things from Fat Shuk [Uncle Fat]."[7]

As the rural committee chairman, Lau was automatically an ex-officio member of

In 1980 Lau became the chairman of the Heung Yee Kuk, which represented established interests of all inhabitants in the New Territories. He held the position for 35 years and was elected for nine terms.^[10] By the powerful nature of the Kuk he became a high flyer in the Hong Kong politics.^[11] In May 2015, he stepped down as chairman and was succeeded by his son, Kenneth Lau.^[3]

The Melhado Investment Ltd in which Lau was a major shareholder sued the government in the early 1980s for its non-agricultural use of land in the New Territories. In 1983, the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the Melhado. The Melhado case thus became the beginning of widespread use of land in the New Territories for the open storage of containers.^[12]

In the capacity of the Kuk chairman, Lau was invited to be a guest at the signing of the

He was the founding member of the Co-operative Resources Centre, a conservative political group led by Senior Unofficial Member Allen Lee in 1991 to counter the liberal emergence of the United Democrats of Hong Kong in the Legislative Council after the 1991 direct election. The group later transformed itself into the Liberal Party where Lau was a member until he quit the party in 2008. In the 2008 Legislative Council election, Liberal Party chairwoman Selina Chow accused Lau for campaigning for DAB candidate Cheung Hok-ming, the Kuk vice-chairman, who ran in the same constituency which caused her defeat. As a result, Lau quit the party with Andrew Leung, Jeffrey Lam and Sophia Leung, which made the number of the Liberal Party's seats drop from seven to three.^[15][16] The split members later formed the Economic Synergy in 2009 which later merged with the Professional Forum into the Business and Professionals Alliance for Hong Kong (BPA) where Lau was the honorary chairman.

In January 2009, Lau was appointed to the Executive Council of Hong Kong by Chief Executive Donald Tsang, where he held the position until 2012.^[10]

Lau's performance in Legco was considered one of the worst as he had not initiated a

He was at the centre of the declaration-of-interest scandal in 2010. However, Legco ultimately refrained from investigating Lau, for reasons that were never made public. This had caused some people believe that there was collusion between Lau and the government for mutual gain.^{[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]}

He was also at the centre of the controversy in the pro-Beijing walkout ahead of the voting on the

In October 2010, Lau was publicly criticised for his purchase of 19 properties in Yuen Long through companies linked to him after he failed to disclose at least some of the acquisitions to the council within the required 14 days.[28]^[29] In a span of 10 days he revised his declared total ownership of land three times, bringing further criticism from leading figures such as Legco House Committee chairwoman Miriam Lau and deputy chairwoman of Legco's Committee on Members' Interests Emily Lau.^[30][31] His portfolio was later revealed to contain a large amount of land in Hong Kong with 724 plots of land and he was described as "a huge landlord" by Miriam Lau.^[5][32]

Together with his family and through various companies, he owns 40 commercial and residential properties including houses and flats. Prior to October 2010 he registered only 337 plots of land.

In June 2012, the Hong Kong press reported that an indigenous inhabitant of the indigenous village known as San Tin Village in Yuen Long of the New Territories of Hong Kong by the name of Man Yuk Moon (文玉滿) had commenced civil proceedings (HCA 1012 / 2012) against Mr Lau Wong Fat at the High Court of Hong Kong, claiming HK$5,870,000. According to the local press, Mr. Lau Wong Fat refused to comment on the issue when asked. He merely stated that the litigation had been passed to his lawyers for their further handling. The current status of this lawsuit is unclear.[33]^[34]

Retirement and personal life

Amid deteriorating health condition, Lau did not seek re-election as the chairman of the Heung Yee Kuk in May 2015, and was succeeded by his son Kenneth Lau. In January 2016, he was absent from the election of the chairman of the Tuen Mun District Council. The council elected DAB's Leung Kin-man as the new chairman. On 22 February 2016, he resigned as the chairman of the Tuen Mun Rural Committee and thus lost the ex-officio membership of the district council and was succeeded by his son Kenneth Lau. He had already been absent from the Legislative Council occasionally before he gave up standing in the 2016 re-election. His seat in the Heung Yee Kuk functional constituency was succeeded by his son Kenneth Lau.

Lau's self-declared educational record was that he attended Ling Shan College but the identity of this institution is not clear.^[2][35] His business holdings are centred on his chairmanship of Wing Tung Yick (Holdings) Ltd.^[1]

He was married to Ng Mui-chu, and had five children including Kenneth Lau.^[35] His sister married Kingsley Sit, also a rural leader and former member of the Legislative Council. He died on 23 July 2017 at the age of 80 after a long illness.^[36]

Other positions, awards and recognition

In 1977, a new school was named after him: Lau Wong Fat Secondary School in Kowloon.^[37][38] In 1983, he succeeded Tang Yuek Fan as chairman of the New Territories Heung Yee Kuk Yuen Long District Secondary School. He was also an honorary court member of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.^[13] He also received an honorary doctoral degree from the China University of Political Science and Law in 2012.^[39]

Wong Chu Road, a major thoroughfare in

From 2004 to 2015 he had represented Hong Kong to perform the

• Small House Policy
• Waiting for Uncle Fat

References

External links

• List of positions held by Lau Wong-fat, Webb-site