Quick Facts
Biography
Nicholas Yang Wei-hsiung (Chinese: 楊偉雄, born 22 April 1955 in Taiwan) is the Secretary for Innovation and Technology of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region since November, 2015, who has also served as the Executive Vice President of Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Education and business career
Yang lived in Jersey City, New Jersey before moving to Pasadena to attend the California Institute of Technology. He graduated in 1977 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He went on to obtain a master's degree at Stanford University in the same field, and worked as a senior design engineer at Intel. He returned to Stanford to earn an MBA, and worked briefly at Bain & Company before moving to Asia in 1983.
He became a naturalized US citizen on 2 September 1977. On 15 December 1979 in Santa Clara, California, he married Winnie Sui-king Yung, daughter of the Chairman and founder of Hong Kong-based Shell Electric Manufacturing (蜆殼電器). She became a US citizen on 8 August 1984. Yang joined Shell Electric in 1983 and served as Executive Director until resigning on 30 September 2003. He was a director during its initial public offering and the sale of its fibre-optic business to JDSU. He moved to JDSU in 1999. Afterwards he became involved in venture capital and private equity. In 2003 he was appointed CEO of the Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company.
In academia and government
Yang became Executive Vice President of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2010. After Leung Chun-ying emerged as the winner of the 2012 Hong Kong Chief Executive election, Yang's name came up as one of the top candidates to head the government's newly created Technology and Communications Bureau. As the Hong Kong Basic Law requires that principal government officials have no right of abode in any foreign country, Yang visited the U.S. consulate to renounce his U.S. citizenship in May that year.
In July 2012 Yang became the target of an investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption regarding a government contract which a foundation he directed, the eInclusion Foundation, had obtained in 2010.
On 2 March 2015, he was appointed the Innovation & Technology Adviser to the Leung Chun-ying and an non-official member of the Executive Council to pave the way for the city's Innovation and Technology Bureau (ITB).
On 20 November 2015, the Innovation and Technology Bureau was established, Yang was appointed as the first Secretary for Innovation and Technology.
On January 2016, Yang claimed that he has met Steve Jobs before, stating time and time again that "Have you ever met Steve Jobs, I have, I really have" when he shared with the young tech entrepreneurs how Steve Jobs had inspired him on the importance of 'standards' and 'platforms' in the development of Innovation and Technology nowadays.
On April 2016, There were revelation from the Panama Papers leaks that showed that Yang had created 2 questionable accounts in which he transferred a large number of PolyU stocks for his own benefits. Yang said the decisions to set up the BVI firms was proper.