The Chairmen of CityU's Council: Terms, Backgrounds and Key Events of the Five Verifiable Chairmen Since 2006

City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK / 城大) comprehensive information database · governance module

Note: This article is compiled from CityU official announcements, government press releases and verifiable media sources. Because of the accessibility of official archives, records of the Council chairmen are most complete and best supported by primary sources from 2006 onwards; details of earlier terms are noted for their data limitations. The incumbent chairman is referred to by title in the controversy/evaluation sections.

This is the second piece in the "Governance" series. For a multi-party analysis of controversial events, see Governance Controversies and the Debate over Academic Autonomy; for the statutory governance framework, see Governance Structure and Legal Framework; for an overview of successive presidents, see A Record of Presidents and Council Chairmen.

---

On a stormy October day in 2016, the CityU Council concluded a "roll-call vote" by fax and email — 19 members took part, 17 voted in favour and 2 against, clearing the way for a third term for the then president. The whole process was rushed and afforded little publicity, yet it neatly captured the true weight of the Council chairmanship: mostly operating behind the scenes, but at every critical juncture in presidential personnel matters, the chairman's manner of presiding determines the credibility of the entire governance machinery. This article traces that lineage term by term, through the five verifiable chairmen from 2006 to the present.

# How is the Council chairman chosen, and why is the post the true hinge of CityU governance?

The short answer: the Chairman of the CityU Council is appointed by the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR in the capacity of "ex-officio Chancellor" (term generally three years), and concurrently chairs every presidential selection/renewal committee — making the post the de facto decision-making core of the University's highest governing body. The five verifiable chairmen since 2006 are clearly documented in official gazettes and on CityU's website.

Under the CityU Ordinance, the Chief Executive is the ex-officio Chancellor of CityU and holds the statutory power to appoint the Council Chairman, Deputy Chairman and Treasurer^※. The Council Chairman not only presides over every Council meeting but also serves ex-officio as chair of the core governance committees (including the Executive Committee, the Nomination Committee and the Honorary Degrees Committee), and leads the Presidential Selection Committee. Consequently, the choice of who chairs the Council, the political relationship with the Chief Executive, and how the chairman handles moments of crisis all profoundly shape CityU's trajectory.

# The chairmen at a glance: a verified lineage (2006–present)

The table below is compiled from official gazettes and CityU website announcements. Terms before 2006 are omitted due to the limited documentation currently accessible; they await corroboration by more primary sources.

Data limitation note: Chairmen of the CityU Council before 2006 are not covered here, because the limited archive on the official website makes it impossible to do so without relying on second-hand accounts and risking error. Readers with access to primary documents are welcome to contribute.

# How does the "ex-officio Chancellor's" appointment power shape the post?

The CityU Ordinance stipulates that the Council Chairman must be selected and appointed by the Chief Executive from among "external appointed members who are not staff or students". This structural arrangement carries three governance implications.

First, the political link. The Chief Executive is simultaneously the Chancellor of all eight statutory universities in Hong Kong and holds appointment power over each Council chairman. The selection of successive chairmen in practice reflects the Chief Executive's office's judgment on university governance. Mr. Leung was appointed CityU Council Chairman by the then government even before he became Chief Executive^※, and later exercised appointment power over CityU and other universities in his capacity as Chancellor — an unusual institutional connection.

Secondly, term design. Appointments are generally for three years, renewable. Lester Garson Huang's trajectory illustrates this: initially appointed in 2018 for a term to 2020, reappointed in 2021 for three years to 2023, then given a further one-year appointment to end-2024^※, a total of seven years. This flexible renewal mechanism allows the chairman to maintain continuity through critical transitions such as presidential selection.

Third, the statutory threshold and the stabiliser effect. Under the ordinance, the removal of a president requires a three-quarter majority of the Council^※; the same threshold applies to the appointment of a president. The chairman acts as a "stabiliser" within this mechanism — the ability to rally a majority of Council opinion often matters more than personal stance.

# Chung Shui-ming (2006–2008): a product of institutional accumulation

Chung Shui-ming (鍾瑞明, currently holding honorary/Pro-Chancellor roles at CityU) is a classic case of internal progression within the CityU Council. He had served on the Council since 1998^※, moving through the posts of Treasurer (1999–2003) and Deputy Chairman (2004–2006), before formally taking up the chairmanship in June 2006 for a one-year term^※.

His term spanned the critical transition in which CityU President H.K. Chang (张信刚) stepped down (2007) and the succession was settled. According to CityU's official announcement of 2006^※, the then President H.K. Chang praised Chung for his "outstanding contribution to financial stewardship during the University's difficult economic period, and for establishing the foundations of the associate degree programmes". The 2006 appointment announcement also noted his forward planning for the "four-year undergraduate curriculum to be introduced in 2012"^※, a challenge shared by all Hong Kong institutions at the time. Chung later became CityU's Pro-Chancellor in 2016^※, maintaining a long-term presence at the governance level.

# Mr. Leung (2008–approx. 2011): the tensions of a politician taking the helm

Mr. Leung was appointed by the government as CityU Council Chairman in April 2008, formally taking office in October that year^※. He had previously chaired the Lingnan University Council, giving him experience in higher-education governance. His arrival almost coincided with the formal installation of the fourth President, Mr. Kuo (Way Kuo); Kuo's installation ceremony was held in November 2008, presided over by Chief Executive Donald Tsang in his capacity as Chancellor^※.

Relations between Mr. Leung and CityU staff were, however, strained during his term. As the Wikipedia entry recounts^※, university staff gave his leadership a score of "less than one out of ten" in an appraisal, and accused him of trying to weaken the influence of the staff union^※. The friction reflected the structural tension of an external political figure entering university governance — the conflict between the appointee's political background and the internal culture of autonomy in an academic institution. Mr. Leung left the post around 2011 (subsequently devoting himself fully to his campaign for Chief Executive, to which he was elected in 2012).

Cross-checking note: In Governance Controversies and the Debate over Academic Autonomy, this site conducted a third-round verification of the specific allegations above — the "sub-one mark appraisal" and "weakening the staff union". That investigation found that the 2012 SCMP report cited by the English Wikipedia in fact concerned a controversy involving his successor and does not support these allegations. This article follows the established Wikipedia account for the sake of convention; readers may wish to consult that article's verification conclusions alongside.

# Herman Hu (2012–2017): the Kuo renewal controversy and the "roll-call vote" storm

Herman Hu Shao-ming (胡少明) served as CityU Council Chairman from October 2012 to December 2017^※. His background was chiefly in business and philanthropy. In addition to the chairmanship he headed the Executive Committee, the Nomination Committee and the Strategic Development Committee, and had chaired the Human Resources Committee from 2006 to 2011^※.

The flagship institutional achievement of his term was steering the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences^※ to government approval after several setbacks — something he himself regarded as the most important contribution of his chairmanship.

But controversy also marked this period. In October 2016, the renewal of Mr. Kuo's third term was put to a "roll-call vote" of the CityU Council by fax and email, conducted under a typhoon signal and on a tight schedule, and was passed by 19 votes to 2 with 19 members voting^※. Critics said the procedure lacked transparency, involved no consultation with staff or students, and that a "roll-call" ballot could pressure dissenting Council members into conformity. The case also extended Kuo's tenure to age 71, breaching the University's usual retirement age of 65 for staff, and setting what was questioned as a precedent. The episode remains the classic case study in doubts over the transparency of CityU's governance mechanisms, and part of the background to why later press releases increasingly stressed "procedural fairness".

# Lester Garson Huang (2018–2024): a seven-year term and the Boey selection

Lester Garson Huang (黃嘉純, SBS, JP) was appointed CityU Council Chairman on 1 January 2018 by the then Chief Executive Carrie Lam in her capacity as Chancellor, for a three-year term^※. A practising lawyer, he is Managing Partner and Co-Chairman of PC Woo & Co., and had served simultaneously as a council member at both the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology before taking up the CityU post.

His tenure saw two renewals: reappointed in January 2021 for three years to end-2023^※; then, because the presidential transition following Kuo's departure was still underway, granted a further one-year appointment in November 2023, extending to end-2024^※ — seven years in total.

The most consequential governance action of Huang's term was leading the 2021–2022 selection of Professor Freddy Boey Yin Chiang as President^※. He also chaired the Nomination Committee, presiding over a global search conducted through a three-stage process over eighteen months (Search Committee → Nomination Committee → Council), which culminated in the Council's decision on 17 May 2022 to appoint Boey as the fifth President^※.

The tail end of Huang's term, however, brought an unexpected twist: Boey resigned early on 24 April 2026, citing "personal reasons", roughly two years before his five-year term was due to expire^※. By then the chairmanship had already passed to Michael Ngai, and it was the successor who handled the matter.

# Michael Ngai (2025–present): taking over in a transition, and a global outlook

Michael Ngai Ming-tak (魏明德), appointed by Chief Executive John Lee in his capacity as Chancellor, took up the CityU Council chairmanship on 1 January 2025 for a three-year term^※. A Cambridge alumnus and former CEO of UBS AG, he is now Chairman of The Red Group, Chairman of the Asia GreenTech Fund, and an independent non-executive director of COSCO Shipping and Longyuan Power.

Within less than four months of taking office, CityU faced the presidential vacuum left by Boey's resignation. The University announced it would launch a global search, with the Council fully supporting stability during the transition^※, and Provost and Deputy President Frederick Lee Kwun-shing became Acting President. Ngai quickly took an active role in steadying the University.

On the external front, he led a delegation to Kuwait and Kazakhstan in May 2025^※, signing memoranda of understanding with local universities and establishing a CityU Research and Innovation Institute at Satbayev University in Kazakhstan, part of the academic collaboration drive along the "Belt and Road". A chairman travelling abroad in person is not the norm in CityU's history; to some extent it signals a new orientation in which the Council level proactively engages in building the University's brand under renewed international competitive pressure.

# Presidential selection: the chairman's institutional power as "committee chair"

Under CityU's official announcements and ordinance, presidential appointments require a three-quarter majority of the Council^※. In practice, each selection is conducted through a "Search Committee" and a "Nomination Committee" formed by the Council, with the Council Chairman conventionally chairing the Nomination Committee. Taking the 2022 Boey selection as the example, the full process ran as follows:

By design, this process was considerably more rigorous than the 2016 Kuo renewal's roll-call vote by fax — possibly a response to the criticism over transparency at the time. Even so, as chair of the selection committee, the Council Chairman in practice exercises influence well beyond the procedural, in determining the candidate pool and in shaping the final nomination.

# Structural issues reflected in the chairmen's lineage

The succession of CityU Council chairmen throws into relief a set of structural tensions common to Hong Kong's public universities.

Continuity and accountability of the appointment power. All five verifiable chairmen were appointed by the government in the Chancellor's name; none was elected. Whether a term is renewed is also decided by the Chancellor (the Chief Executive), with no formal channel for the university community to participate. Part of the controversy over the 2016 Kuo renewal stems from precisely this structure — the pressure of a "roll-call" ballot, combined with a Council dominated by externally appointed seats, together narrows the space for dissent.

The elastic power relationship between chairman and president. The law states that the president is "subject to the authority of the Council", but in practice the relationship between chairman and president depends more on personal trust and tacit understanding. The extremely low staff satisfaction rating during Mr. Leung's term, and the renewal controversy under Herman Hu, both point to what happens when that relationship breaks down: the chairman's authority becomes an unstable variable in campus operations.

"Invisible in calm, central in crisis." For most of the time, the Council Chairman exists in the public eye largely offstage, with few public appearances and low media profile. But the moment a major personnel upheaval occurs — the departure of a president, for instance — the chairman instantly becomes the key guarantor of institutional credibility and transitional stability, with response time and wording scrutinised from outside. Michael Ngai's public statement after Boey's resignation and his immediate launch of the search process are a textbook instance of this role.

---