John Lee

John Lee (born December 1957, Hong Kong [now in China]) government official and former police officer in Hong Kong who in 2022 became the chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of China.

Lee was born and raised in Hong Kong. Lee, an adherent of the Roman Catholic faith, graduated from Wah Yan College in Kowloon, a secondary school run by the Roman Catholic Jesuit religious order. In 1977 he joined the Hong Kong Police Force. Three years later he married Janet Lam; they had two sons.

Over time, Lee rose through the ranks of the Hong Kong Police Force: he was promoted to chief superintendent in 1997, to assistant commissioner in 2003, and to senior assistant commissioner in 2007. In 2010 he was named deputy commissioner, the second highest position in the organization. While serving on the police force, Lee earned a master’s degree in public policy and administration from Charles Sturt University in Australia via a program between the university and the Hong Kong Police Force.

In 2012 Lee left the police force to serve as undersecretary of security in Hong Kong’s government. He was appointed secretary for security in 2017. While in that position, in 2019 he advocated for a highly controversial extradition bill that led to widespread outrage and anti-government protests in Hong Kong, which were met with a violent response from the police; Lee defended their actions as being necessary. He also played a prominent role the next year with a national security law imposed by mainland China on Hong Kong. The law, which criminalized acts such as sedition, secession, and subversion, was deeply unpopular, as people feared that it could be broadly interpreted and used to quell protests and other forms of dissent against the Chinese government and to reduce Hong Kong’s autonomy. Their fears were not unfounded, as the law, and Lee’s implementation of it, effectively crushed what was left of the city’s once vibrant pro-democracy activism and press. In 2020 Lee was one of 11 Hong Kong officials hit with sanctions from the United States “for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and restricting the freedom of expression or assembly of the citizens of Hong Kong.”

In June 2021 Lee was promoted to chief secretary, the second highest position in the government, under HKSAR’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam. In April 2022 Lam announced that she would not stand for a second term, and days later Lee stepped down from his chief secretary role and, with Beijing’s approval, announced his candidacy for the chief executive position. He was, in fact, the only candidate and was elected to the post on May 8, 2022, receiving 1,416 out of 1,424 votes from Hong Kong’s Election Committee. He was inaugurated on July 1, 2022, which was also the 25th anniversary of Great Britain’s returning the administration of Hong Kong to China.

Lee took the helm at a time when Hong Kong—which had developed into a global business and finance hub in the 20th century under British colonial rule—was losing thousands of people and a number of international businesses in light of the city’s harsh COVID-19 pandemic restrictions as well as the growing influence of mainland China and its governing philosophy over the city.