Hilton Cheong-Leen

Hilton Cheong-Leen, CBE, JP (6 August 1922 – 4 January 2022) was a Hong Kong politician and businessman.

Cheong-Leen was born in Georgetown, British Guiana, on 6 August 1922 to a third-generation Chinese mother Elvira Cheong-Leen and father Edward Cheong-Leen who came through Hong Kong from China to join an uncle in Guyana.

He was educated at Central High School in Georgetown.

He moved to Hong Kong when he was around nine and went to La Salle College in Hong Kong.

He had worked in a law firm, an import and export company and as a banker after school.

After the fall of Hong Kong, he moved from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong to unoccupied territory in China, living with his family in Guilin where he worked for the American consulate, and also Kunming, finally returning to Hong Kong after the war.

He was a journalist for a period of time, having been the Hong Kong correspondent the BBC.

He was offered a job with the South China Morning Post but he followed his family's wish to go into commerce and set up his own import and export firm H. Cheong-Leen & Co. in 1945, importing gifts, premiums and watches.

As the representative of the association, he visited London and New York and met with the Colonial Office officials and Members of Parliament (MPs) of different parties including William John Peel, son of Hong Kong Governor Sir William Peel, and United Nations officials Ralph Bunche and Benjamin Victor Cohen over constitutional reform and other issues respectively in the 1950s.

He was also vice-chairman of the United Nations Association of Hong Kong led by Ma Man-fai, whom he befriended during their lives in Kunming.

As a publisher, he also joined the Junior Chamber in 1953 and represented the chamber in the international conference of the Junior Chamber in San Francisco.

He was for many years chairman of the Hong Kong Watch Importers Association.

He continues to be the honorary life president of the Hong Kong Watch Manufacturers Association.

At the time the Urban Council elections, the only direct elections in the colony at the time, were dominated by Brook Bernacchi's Reform Club of Hong Kong, Cheong-Leen founded the Hong Kong Civic Association in 1954 with Roger Lobo and A. de O. Sales, as well as Rev. Brigant Cassian and Dr. Woo Pak-foo.

Cheong-Leen was the founding secretary-general of the association and was in the first meeting at a bar on the mezzanine floor of Jimmy's Kitchen in Theatre Lane, Central.

He represented the association in the international conference of the United Nations Association in Bangkok in 1955.

As a secretary of the International Association of the Chinese Refugees, he also visited United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva and New York on the refuge issues in Hong Kong.

Cheong-Leen first contested on the Civic Association ticket in 1956 Urban Council election but was not elected.

He ran again in the election in the following year and took the last of the four seats.

He is the longest uninterrupted serving elected officeholder in Hong Kong history as an elected member of the Urban Council of Hong Kong for 34 years from 1957 to 1991.

As the progress of constitutional reform halted when the Young Plan was shelved, the Civic Association and the Reform Club formed a coalition in 1960 to fight for constitutional reform.

In the same year, Cheong-Leen led a delegation to London to make their case to British officials, but their call was not heeded by the government.

He took over as the Civic Association chairman in 1968 and had held the position for many years until 2004.

The Civic Association at the time positioned itself as more pro-middle-class and moderate as compared to the Reform Club.

From 1973 to 1979, he was appointed unofficial member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong.

Cheong-Leen contested the chairmanship of the Urban Council in 1973 when the post was elected by the council for the first time.

He lost to A. de O. Sales but was elected vice-chairman.

He was first appointed an unofficial member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong on 1 May 1973 by Governor Sir Murray MacLehose with Guy Sayer to fill the vacancies left by retired H. J. C. Browne and deceased Mary Wong Wing-cheung.

In his first term in the council, he made a major speech advocating nine years of free compulsory education and followed up all the way to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which made it eventually realised.

He was also the first Chinese chairman of the council from 1981 to 1986.

He had been a long-time chairman of the Hong Kong Civic Association, one of the two quasi-opposition political groups in the post-war Urban Council.

He went on to become the first Chinese chairman of the council in 1981 after defeating Denny Huang when A. de.

O. Sales stepped down.

For his public services, he was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1984.

From 1985 to 1988, he was again among the first elected members of the Legislative Council through Urban Council constituency in the first Legislative Council election in 1985.

He held the position until 1986.

He had also many other public positions including the chairman of the Hong Kong Girl Guides Island Regional Association, deputy chairman of the council of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, member of the Fight Crime Committee, board of governors of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Society and the Hong Kong Academy of Ballet.

He was also member of the Wan Chai District Board as an ex officio member.

He remained in the Urban Council for 34 years until he retired in 1991.

After 34 years of service, Cheong-Leen stepped down as the second longest-serving elected officeholder in Hong Kong history, behind Brook Bernacchi's 41 years, and the longest-uninterrupted-serving elected officeholder, after he decided not to seek re-election of the Urban Council in 1991.