Michael Suen Ming-yeung GBS

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

; born 7 April 1944) who served as Acting

Chief Secretary for Administration The Chief Secretary for Administration, commonly known as the Chief Secretary of Hong Kong, is the most senior principal official of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The Chief Secretary is head of the Governmen ...

in 2005 and 2012 and as Secretary for Education of Hong Kong from 2007 to 2012. Born in

Chongqing Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), Postal Romanization, alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a Direct-administered municipalities of China, municipality in Southwes ...

in 1944, his family fled the then provisional capital of

Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...

to Hong Kong in 1947.

Education

Suen attended Wah Yan College, a

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

school in Hong Kong.

Career

He joined the

colonial Colonial or The Colonial may refer to: * Colonial, of, relating to, or characteristic of a colony or colony (biology) Architecture * American colonial architecture * French Colonial * Spanish Colonial architecture Automobiles * Colonial (1920 au ...

Hong Kong Government The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, commonly known as the Hong Kong Government or HKSAR Government, refers to the Executive (government), executive authorities of Hong Kong Special administrative regions of China, ...

in 1966 as an Administrative Officer and was promoted to the rank of Director of Bureau in January 1991. During the early years of his career, he served in the former New Territories Administration,

Resettlement Department The Resettlement Department () was a department of the Government of Hong Kong, responsible for constructing resettlement estates for homeless refugees, established in 1954. In 1973, the Resettlement Department and the Building Section of the U ...

and Environment Branch. He was appointed

Secretary for Constitutional Affairs The Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs is the head of the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau in Government of Hong Kong, which is responsible for promoting the Basic Law, constitutional affairs, electoral development, and c ...

in March 1989 and

Secretary for Home Affairs The Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs is the head of the Home and Youth Affairs Bureau of the Government of Hong Kong, which is responsible for local issues, and the provision of community and youth services. List of office holders Registra ...

in November 1991. He continued his post as Secretary for Home Affairs on 8 July 1997 and took up the appointment as Secretary for Constitutional Affairs on 4 August 1997. Suen took up the post of

Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands The Secretary for Housing () in Hong Kong is responsible for housing related issues. The position was first created in 1973 and re-created in 2022 after renamed to Secretary for Transport and Housing in 2007. List of office holders Political par ...

on 1 July 2002. Upon the resignation of

Donald Tsang Sir Donald Tsang Yam-kuen (; born 7 October 1944) is a former Hong Kong civil servant who served as the second Chief Executive of Hong Kong from 2005 to 2012. Tsang joined the colonial civil service as an Executive Officer in 1967, occupyi ...

on 25 May 2005, he assumed the post as the acting

, until

Rafael Hui Rafael Hui Si-yan (born 8 February 1948) is a former Chief Secretary for Administration of Hong Kong and career civil servant. Hui has been dubbed "Old Master Hui" () and "Fat Dragon" (). Hui was appointed as a Justice of the Peace on 1986 and ...

was appointed. In July 2007, he took over the position of Secretary for Education after

Arthur Li Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, GBM, GBS JP (; born 27 June 1945) is a Hong Kong doctor and politician. He is currently member of the Executive Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the chairman of the Council of the Universi ...

retired. Around 2007 he was known for pushing

trilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

education with English,

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...

and

Putonghua Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standar ...

to boost Hong Kong's competitiveness.

Health

On 27 April 2011, Suen announced that he was suffering from

renal failure Kidney failure, also known as end-stage kidney disease, is a medical condition in which the kidneys can no longer adequately filter waste products from the blood, functioning at less than 15% of normal levels. Kidney failure is classified as eit ...

. Suen was also diagnosed with

Legionnaires' disease Legionnaires' disease is a form of atypical pneumonia caused by any species of ''Legionella'' bacteria, quite often '' Legionella pneumophila''. Signs and symptoms include cough, shortness of breath, high fever, muscle pains, and headaches. Naus ...

on 21 December 2011. The new HK government headquarters found as many as 19 areas contaminated with

legionella ''Legionella'' is a genus of pathogenic gram-negative bacteria that includes the species '' L. pneumophila'', causing legionellosis (all illnesses caused by ''Legionella'') including a pneumonia-type illness called Legionnaires' disease and a mi ...

bacteria out of 43 water samples. Suen announced his recovery in January 2012.

Controversy

2007 protest at home

For years as a housing chief, Suen denied to meet with housing rights activists until 2007, when some 30 activists, including Longhair Leung Kwok-hung finally camped out at Suen's house in Happy Valley to protest. Public housing citizens were suffering from excessive rent increase, and the activists tried to voice the concern. The protest turned violent outside his home, with five policemen and one protester injured. Leung was also arrested.

Illegal extension case

In 1994 Suen purchased a new home, the low-rise Shuk Yuen building in Green Lane Happy Valley. He then illegally extended the size of his home to make it bigger. As the former

, his staff reportedly warned him against the illegal extension, sending him a letter in April 2006 to remove the extension, which he reportedly ignored. In 2011, he agreed to reduce the size of the structure. Both the democratic and

pro-Beijing The pro-Beijing camp, pro-establishment camp, pro-government camp or pro-China camp refers to a political alignment in Hong Kong which generally supports the policies of the Beijing central government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) t ...

camps criticised him.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Suen, Michael 1947 births Living people Government officials of Hong Kong Politicians from Chongqing Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Recipients of the Gold Bauhinia Star HK LegCo Members 1988–1991