Legendary Hong Kong tycoon Henry Fok Ying-tung, whose close links to Beijing alternatively led to him being called the ”Patriotic Capitalist” or the ”Godfather”, died in Beijing at the age of 83, it was confirmed on Sunday.
Fok, who died on Saturday night, was a vice-chairperson of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a property tycoon.
But in a colourful career, Fok shipped medicines and other essential supplies to China in the 1950-53 Korean War, and it is believed ran guns for the Chinese in the same conflict, breaking United Nations’s sanctions in the process.
More recently, he bailed out Orient Overseas Container Lines, controlled by future Hong Kong government chief executive Tung Chee-hwa, with $120-million in financial assistance during a slump in the shipping industry in the 1980s.
It was Beijing recalling this favour that led Tung to become Hong Kong’s first government chief executive after Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty from Britain in 1997.
Fok also helped draft Hong Kong’s mini-Constitution, the Basic Law, in the run-up to Hong Kong’s handover nine years ago. These political and other business related activities gave Fok the strong personal links to the Chinese leadership stretching over more than 50 years.
Fok, who was born into a humble family in 1923 at Panyu in southern China’s Guangdong province, became one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest and most-powerful men. Forbes‘s magazine ranked Fok as the world’s 181st wealthiest person in 2006 with $3,7-billion.
Commenting on Fok’s death, Hong Kong government chief executive Donald Tsang said: ”The passing away of Fok is a sad loss to the country and to Hong Kong.”
He added that Fok had worked with singular devotion on the opening up of China’s economy as well as for the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong. – Sapa-DPA