Starry Lee

The Honourable Starry Lee Wai-king SBS, JP
李慧琼
Lee in November 2016
Chairwoman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong
Incumbent
Assumed office 17 April 2015
Preceded by	Tam Yiu-chung
Member of the Executive Council
In office 1 July 2012 – 17 March 2016
Appointed by	Leung Chun-ying
Preceded by	Lau Kong-wah
Succeeded by	Ip Kwok-him
Member of the Legislative Council
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 January 2022
Preceded by	New constituency
Constituency	Kowloon Central
In office 1 October 2012 – 31 December 2021
Preceded by	New constituency
Succeeded by	Constituency abolished
Constituency	District Council (Second)
In office 1 October 2008 – 30 September 2012
Preceded by	Tsang Yok-sing
Succeeded by	Ann Chiang
Constituency	Kowloon West
Member of the Kowloon City District Council
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 January 2000
Preceded by	New constituency
Constituency	To Kwa Wan North
Personal details
Born	(1974-03-13) 13 March 1974 (age 47) British Hong Kong
Political party	Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong
Children	1
Alma mater	Hong Kong University of Science and Technology University of Manchester
Occupation	Councillor
Profession	Accountant
Signature

Starry Lee Wai-king, SBS, JP (Chinese: 李慧琼, born 13 March 1974 in British Hong Kong) is a Hong Kong politician, chairperson of the largest pro-establishment Beijing-loyalist party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB). She is a Legislative Councillor for the Kowloon Central geographical constituency and a Kowloon City District Councillor. From 2012 to 2016, she was a member of the Executive Council.

Biography[]

Born in 1974 in Hong Kong into a working-class family and brought up on a public housing estate,^[1] Lee obtained her Bachelor of Business Administration from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Master of Business Administration from the University of Manchester. She became a professional accountant, working for KPMG in Hong Kong and is currently the principal at CCIF CPA Ltd.

Lee first stood in the District Council elections in 1999 for the Kowloon City District Council, the neighbourhood where she lived. She was elected aged 26, the youngest district councillor at that time.^[2] She joined the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong when she was approached by the former party chairman Tsang Yok-sing around 2004. She was asked to become the part of Tsang's team in the following Legislative Council election in September 2004.^[3] She was listed third on the candidate list and helped Tsang to win a seat in the Kowloon West.

With her professional background, Lee became a new star in the party and also the pro-Beijing camp. She was elected to the Legislative Council with around 39,000 votes, nearly 19 percent of the vote share, when Tsang left the constituency for Hong Kong Island in the 2008 Legislative Council election. In 2011, she was elected as the vice-chairwoman of the party.

In 2012, she was appointed to the Executive Council by Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. At the time, she was the only person to hold positions in three different levels of representative councils, the Executive, Legislative and District Councils. She served on the Executive Council until her resignation in March 2016, when she said she wanted to focus on her work on the Legislative Council and the party. Her position was taken by Ip Kwok-him, a veteran DAB legislator.^[4]

In the 2012 Legislative Council election, Lee contested in the newly created territory-wide District Council (Second) "super seats". Her ticket received over 270,000 votes in total. On 17 April 2015, she was elected as the first woman to chair the DAB, succeeding Tam Yiu-chung.^[5]

After Lee was re-elected in the 2016 Legislative Council election, she succeeded Andrew Leung of the Business and Professionals Alliance for Hong Kong (BPA) to become the chairperson of the Legislative Council House Committee, the second highest office in the legislature. In 2018, she was invited to sit on the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).^[6]

On 18 May 2020, Lee was re-elected as House Committee chairperson. Prior to the vote, Chan Kin-por, the nominee of Legislative Council president Andrew Leung, had taken the seat of the presiding member – a position which had been held since October 2019 by pro-democrat Dennis Kwok – with the help of security personnel, and 15 pro-democratic lawmakers had been removed from the meeting room after scuffles had broken out; during Lee's election, three pro-democrats sat outside the room in protest. After the physical removal of the pro-democratic lawmakers, Lee was elected. ^[7][8]

In March 2021, Lee supported changes that would reduce the power of Legislative Council members, claiming that opposition members had blocked legislation and caused a power vacuum.^[9]

In October 2021, Lee and fellow lawmaker Holden Chow were criticized by the mother of Amber Poon, claiming that Lee and Chow were "vanishing" after holding a press conference in 2019 with her, to push forward the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill.^[10]

During the 2021 Hong Kong legislative election, Lee dismissed concerns that the record-low voter turnout of 30.2% was problematic.^[11]

In January 2022, the mainland Chinese national emblem was permanently added to the Legislative Council chamber, after Andrew Leung, Starry Lee Wai-king and Ma Fung-kwok decided that it should be made permanent.^[12] Andrew Leung had earlier said it would be only temporary for the swearing in of lawmakers.^[12]

See also[]

• District Council (Second)

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Starry Lee.

• Official Website of Starry Lee
• HK Legislative Council - Members' Biographies