Tsang Tak-sing, the unrepentant youth activist made good

Once upon a time, Tsang Tak-sing was an idealistic young lad who dared to challenge the establishment – and to this day he is unabashed about the anti-British activism that landed him in jail.

It could not have been more ironic, in that light, that he was criticised more than four decades later for doing “inadequate work” as home affairs minister among Hong Kong’s youth, a factor Beijing officials blamed for spawning the student-led Occupy protests last year.

In a bombshell dropped on Tuesday, Tsang will be replaced as secretary for home affairs as rumours swirl that both Beijing and Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying are unhappy with his performance.

That might have been an unfortunate fall from grace, given Tsang had a delayed start on the career ladder compared to his peers because of the jailing. Had the anti-British disturbances of 1967 not broken out, he might not have been galvanised into distributing leaflets against colonial rule – for which he was arrested – and his life would have taken a completely different path.

But Tsang had “always been aware of injustices in Hong Kong society”, according to an interview the city’s future chief justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang did at Stanley Prison in 1968.

He told Li, then a summer intern at the regional magazine Far Eastern Economic Review: “I recall vividly one incident that left a deep impression on me. One day after school, I saw a policeman overturn a hawker’s [cart of] tomatoes and then stamp on them deliberately.