New Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung’s 45-year climb from information officer to minister
In the 1970s, Cheung arranged visits for foreign media to the city’s refugee camps. Today, he’s one of the city’s top officials
At his farewell gathering a decade ago, a smiling Matthew Cheung Kin-chung looked gratefully back at his time in the civil service, where he had worked since joining in 1972.
He recalled going without any rest days for six months while serving as a senior information officer in the 1970s, when hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees flooded Hong Kong. He had taken less than three weeks off in the five years leading up to his retirement in March 2007 as permanent secretary for economic development and labour.
“I am most happy with my career, and I don’t think I could compose anything better if I were given the chance to rewrite my life story,” he told reporters during the gathering.
Just months after his parting words, under the administration of then chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, Cheung was appointed secretary for labour and welfare – a role that would prove to be his most turbulent in all his years in government.
Cheung, now 65, graduated from the University of Hong Kong in 1972. He joined the government that same year as an information officer, working in the administration’s newsroom.