July 1 marked three years of Hong Kong under the leadership of CY Leung. Does “The Wolf” make the grade? By Adrienne Chum and Dan Creffield. Additional reporting by Tammy Ha, Yanis Chan, Natasha Fernandes and Joanne Lee.
No one can say it’s been an easy three years for Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. Politically, professionally and personally, he’s been battered at every turn. But does he deserve the hate? We took a look at what our CE set out to do in his manifesto, and how it measures up to what he’s actually done. Is CY getting straight As? Or is it more a case of “Must Try Harder”? Read on to find out…
Seeking Approval
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Since he was appointed CY’s approval ratings have trended in one direction: down. But why? Check out the full timeline of CY's time in office.
How has CY managed the city's property in the last three years?
What impact has CY had on the economy?
Has CY's handling of freedom of speech and constitutional reform come up to scratch?
How has CY managed welfare and the poverty gap?
Have Hong Kong-mainland relations flourished under the CE?
Has CY fixed pollution?
The "Emperor of the Working Class"
Before he was a Chief Executive, he was a millionaire… .
How’s your career going? By the age of 30, CY Leung was reportedly on an annual salary of $10 million. They called him the “Emperor of the Working Class,” thanks to his humble origins.
After all, CY couldn’t have had a more mundane start in life. Born the son of a policeman, he studied at the Hong Kong Polytechnic in 1974 before embarking on a course on valuation and property management at Bristol Polytechnic in the UK. There he gained his first taste of political life, bonding with other patriotically-minded Chinese students.
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Returning to Hong Kong, CY joined global real estate company Jones Lang Wootton, and in just five years he was vice-chairman and equity partner, pulling in that cool $10 mil. In 1993 CY had set up his own surveying company, C. Y. Leung & Co., and he was later named president of the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors.
In the meantime his political career was also taking off. In 1985 CY joined the high-powered Basic Law Consultative Committee and three years later, aged just 34, he was appointed secretary-general of the committee, a post usually only reserved for Chinese Communist Party members: an affiliation he’s always denied.
