Veteran Hong Kong politician Lau Nai-keung dies, aged 71, after decade-long battle with cancer
- Lau, who founded pro-democracy group Meeting Point in the 1980s, switched to pro-Beijing camp years later
- Remembered as a role model, teacher and patriot, he was a long-standing member of the Basic Law Committee
Veteran pro-Beijing politician Lau Nai-keung, who advised the Chinese government on Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, died on Wednesday at the age of 71 after a decade-long battle with cancer.
Lau, whose political career was marked by his founding of a pro-democracy group in the early 1980s and his parting from the camp to become a pro-Beijing stalwart a decade later, died at 7.10pm on Wednesday, according to Chang Ka-mun, a former member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
The former Post columnist and social sciences graduate from the University of Hong Kong founded the pro-democracy Meeting Point in 1983. It was one of the few groups that supported the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
Lau was appointed as a CPPCC member in 1988, becoming the first member of Hong Kong’s liberal camp to join China’s top advisory body.
But he quit the Meeting Point in the early 1990s over its support for then governor Chris Patten’s proposed political reforms. He had taken a critical stance towards the pro-democracy camp ever since.
The Meeting Point merged with the United Democrats of Hong Kong in 1994 to form the Democratic Party.