James Tien

James Tien Pei-chun, GBS, OBE, JP (born 8 January 1947, Shanghai) is the former Chairman and Leader of the Liberal Party (LP) and former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (Legco). Coming from the background of an entrepreneur, he was also a non-official member of the Executive Council of Hong Kong (Exco), member of Central and Western and Kwai Tsing District Council and Hong Kong member to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Tien was born in 1947 in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong two years later with his family. His father, Francis Tien, was a successful clothing merchant, owning textile factories in Hong Kong and was appointed member of the Legislative Council and many consultative bodies for the colonial government in the 1960s and 70s. James Tien's younger brother Michael Tien owns the fashion chain G2000 and was chairman of the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation before it merged with the Mass Transit Railway Corporation.

He traveled to the United States to study chemical engineering when he was 17 years old and met his wife Mary, a Vietnamese-Chinese, in the college. In 1970, the couple returned to Hong Kong and he worked for his father in the factories.

He was first appointed a District Councilor for Kwai Tsing District in 1985 as a representative of the business sector as his factories were in Kwai Tsing. He was appointed to the Hong Kong Basic Law Consultative Committee (BLCC) which oversaw the drafting of the post-1997 Hong Kong Basic Law in 1985. He was part of the Group of 89, the conservative faction of the Committee members consisting of mostly businessmen and professionals elites.

He was first appointed to the Legislative Council in 1988. In the 1991 Legislative Council elections, he was elected through the Industrial (First) functional constituency. In 1993, he co-founded the pro-business Liberal Party which was established by the business sector in the legislature countering the liberal faction of the United Democrats of Hong Kong after its landslide victory in the first direct legislative election in 1991. He became Chairman of the Liberal Party after the resignation of its first leader, Allen Lee Peng Fei, in December 1998.

He was also Chairman of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, an most influential chamber of commerce in Hong Kong between 1996 and 1997. He is also a general committee member of both the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Hong Kong Industries.

Tien was a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 2003 until 2014. Tien joined the Executive Council, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's cabinet, in July 2002 as Chairman of the Liberal Party, following the reorganisation of the Council under the new Principal Officials Accountability System of the Chief Executive.

After one year, on 6 July 2003, Tien announced his resignation from the Executive Council, when his calls to delay the controversial legislation on Article 23 of the Basic Law were rejected. His resignation ultimately led to the withdrawal of the legislation and break-up of the "ruling alliance" of the Chief Executive, causing his popularity and that of Liberal Party to surge. Until 2004, he held the seat of the Commercial (First) Functional Constituency in Legco, representing the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce's approximately 4,000 members. He then was elected to the New Territories East geographical constituency direct elections for the first time in the 2004 Legislative Council elections. In the 2005 Chief Executive election, the announcement that his ally Henry Tang had dropped out of the race was further bad news about for party. He initially said that he might stand for selection as Chief Executive, but ultimately did not.

Tien lost his seat in the 2008 Legislative Council elections, when the Liberal Party lost all its geographical constituency seats, and he subsequently announced that he would not stand again for Legco. He also resigned as Chairman of the Liberal Party.

In 2010, Tien resumed his involvement with the Liberal Party in the capacity of Honorary Chairman. He threw his weight behind Henry Tang in the 2012 Chief Executive election. In 2012, Tien went back on his previous undertaking and successfully re-claimed the New Territories East seat in the 2012 Legislative Council elections.

During the 2014 Hong Kong protests, Tien called on Chief Executive CY Leung to resign, leading to the CPPCC hearing a call to eject him as a member. Tien was formally stripped of his post at the meeting on 29 October, making him the first person in history to have received this sanction. Tien stepped down from his position as the leader of the Liberal Party after the removal.

In the 2016 Legislative Council election, James Tien ran a campaign against the second term of the Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. He stood as a second candidate on his young party colleague Dominic Lee's ticket. The ticket gained 20,031 votes, around 3 per cent of the vote share and both of them were not elected.

On 11 October 2007, it was reported that Tien had accepted MTRC CEO Chow Chung-kong's sincere apology after the latter backed Civic Party barrister Tanya Chan Suk-chong against Liberal Party lawyer and incumbent Mark Lin Man-kit in the district council election for the Peak district.

Tien explained that Chow would have to bear all the political consequences for his choice of backing a rival party's candidate. Tien made clear that he was personally infuriated by Chow's unfriendly act despite the Liberal Party's loyalty and consistent support for the rail company. Tien further stated that the MTRC would face probable dissent from Liberal members in future matters involving MTRC inside district councils.

Tien backed down on 12 October 2007 by sincerely apologising to both Chow and the public.