‘Who’s the real leader?’: Joshua Wong in Fortune top 10 as CY Leung gets thumbs down

Hong Kong student activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung has been named among the top 10 of the world’s 50 “greatest leaders” by US business magazine Fortune, which gave a contrasting thumbs-down to Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.

Wong, who gained international recognition as one of the core leaders of last year’s Occupy movement, is in the company of global heavyweights such as Chinese President Xi Jinping, ranked number three, Pope Francis at number four, and Apple boss Tim Cook, who tops the annual list.

The 18-year-old Open University student beat other, more famous and influential personalities such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates (18th, with wife, Melinda), Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg (25th), and Chinese basketball icon Yao Ming (26th).

Hong Kong’s chief executive did not make the list.

The magazine said Wong was one of the most compelling figures during the 79-day Occupy protests, when pro-democracy activists and others blocked key roads across Hong Kong to demand genuine universal suffrage.

“Wong doesn’t look like Hollywood’s idea of a charismatic rebel leader,” Fortune said, but “his non-violent protest message and energetic idealism galvanised crowds that, over months, numbered in the hundreds of thousands.”