Henry Lee Hau Shik | |
|---|---|
李孝式 | |
 | |
| Minister of Finance | |
| In office 31 August 1957 – 22 August 1959 | |
| Monarch | Abdul Rahman |
| Prime Minister | Tunku Abdul Rahman |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Tan Siew Sin |
| Minister of Transport | |
| In office 1 August 1955 – 31 August 1957 | |
| Monarch | Elizabeth II |
| Chief minister | Tunku Abdul Rahman |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Tan Siew Sin |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1900-11-19)19 November 1900 |
| Died | 22 June 1988(1988-06-22) (aged 87) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia |
| Political party | Kuomintang (KMT) Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) Independence of Malaya Party (IMP)[1] |
| Spouse(s) | Dawn Kathleen Glen Kwan Choi Lin |
| Residence(s) | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia |
| Education | St John's College, Cambridge University of London |
| Occupation | Politician, businessman, banker, lawyer |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Republic of China United Kingdom Malaysia |
| Branch/service | National Revolutionary Army British Indian Army |
| Rank | Colonel |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
Sir Henry Lee Hau Shik (Yue Chinese:李孝式; 19 November 1900 – 22 June 1988), also known asH.S. Lee, was aMalaysian politician and businessman who served as theMinister of Finance andMinister of Transport under former Chief Minister and former Prime MinisterTunku Abdul Rahman from August 1955 to August 1959 and in between,Federation of Malaya gained independence from Britain in August 1957. He co-founded theMalaysian Chinese Association (MCA) andAlliance Party (Alliance), predecessor ofBarisan Nasional (BN). He was also a member of theMerdeka mission to London and the only Chinese signatory of the Malayan independence agreement with Britain. He was the only major leader of the independence movement not born in Malaya, instead, he was born in theBritish Hong Kong.[2]
Henry Lee Hau Shik was born on 19 November 1900 in Hong Kong, the eldest son of prominent and wealthy businessman Lee Kwai-Lim and Kam Kwok-Chun. His family ran a silk-trading firm, Kam Lun Tai, which later branched into remittance and mining, with offices in Hong Kong and Singapore.[3] He had two brothers and two sisters.
Lee's great-grandfather had been a senior official during the reign ofEmperor Tongzhi of theQing dynasty while his grandfather was a famous scholar and philanthropist in his hometown of Zhenlong,Xinyi in Guangdong.[who?]
Lee received his secondary education in Guangzhou in 1914, before attendingQueen's College in Hong Kong. He completed degrees in Economics and Law at theUniversity of London andSt John's College, Cambridge,[4] where he came to know the futureKing George VI.[3]
Lee's first job was as a government servant inHainan, which he quit after three days as his boss would only playmahjong all day.[5] He then worked atP&O Bank in Hong Kong.[3]
Lee came to Malaya on holiday in 1924 and stayed on after acquiring a tin mine in Kepong, subsequently establishing himself as a major tin mine owner in Selangor and Perak.[6]
In Malaya, Lee was deeply involved in Chinese guild andclan associations and became a recognised leader of the Guangdong and Gaozhou communities.[5] He helped form the Kwantung Association, Chinese Mining Association and Chinese Chamber of Commerce.[3] He was also president of the Miners' Association of Negeri Sembilan, Selangor and Pahang from 1938 to 1955 and president of the Pan-Malayan Association of Tin Miners between 1946 and 1955.[7]
At various times, he was president of the Selangor Kwang Tung Association, National Kwang Tung Association, Pan-Malayan Kochow Association, United Lees' Association,Federation of Malaya Red Cross Association andKuen Cheng Girls School.[7]
WhenJapan invaded China in 1937, Lee, who was known for his association with China'sKuomintang Party, headed the Selangor China Relief Fund in support of China. On 26 October in the following year, Selangor Chinese originating from Guangdong Province organized the Kwang Tung Chinese Home-Relief Association (KTCHRA). At its inaugural congress, Lee, one of the sponsors of the movement, gave a speech in which he explained why the association was to be formed. A prominent leader of the Chinese community in general and the anti-Japanese movement in particular at that time,Cheong Yoke Choy, was appointed as its president, while Lee and Chong Khoon Lin were appointed as vice-presidents.[8] He was later made Chief of thePassive Defence Forces of Kuala Lumpur in 1941. Due to his anti-Japanese war efforts, Lee was forced to flee with his family to Mumbai via Chongqing when thewar reached Malaya that same year and the Japanese put out a bounty on him.[3][5][9]
Lee was made a colonel in theKuomintang army, then based in Burma, after meetingChiang Kai-shek in Chongqing. Later, Lee was also made a colonel of theBritish Army in India and liaised between the twoAllied armies along the China-Burma border for the remainder of the war.[3][5]
After World War II, Lee was appointed to committees tasked with rebuilding the Malayan economy, which had suffered during theJapanese occupation. When emergency rule was imposed by the British in 1948 in response to thecommunist insurgency, he was appointed to theMalayan Union Advisory Council, Federal Legislative Council and Federal Executive Council.
Lee was also advisor to the Director of Operations representing the mining and farming communities, and managed to persuadeBritish High Commissioner to MalayaGerald Templer to reorganise the Home Guard in theKinta Valley so they could defend the tin mines. For his active opposition to the communists, he was branded a "running dog of the British" and a sum of 60,000 Malayan dollars was put on his head.[7]
In time, Lee felt it was necessary for the Malayan Chinese community to distinguish itself from ethnic Chinese communist supporters and formed the SelangorMalayan Chinese Association (MCA), with the support of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Chinese guilds in the state. Other states eventually followed his lead and set up their own associations. Lee remained head of Selangor MCA until 1955, when he lost the post toOng Yoke Lin.[10]
Lee was also involved in founding the central body of the MCA in 1949. He drafted the party's rules and regulations together with Yong Shook Lin and Khoo Teik Ee, and was instrumental in gettingTan Cheng Lock to become chairman of the MCA steering committee and its first president.[7]
Lee played a key role in forging an ad hoc arrangement with theUnited Malays National Organisation (UMNO) to contest in the1952 local elections that would later evolve into the Alliance Party, predecessor to the Barisan Nasional coalition that has governed Malaysia since independence.[2]
Lee, in his capacity as Selangor MCA chief, and Kuala Lumpur UMNO chairman Yahya Razak agreed to field a single slate of candidates in Kuala Lumpur to counter the formidableIndependence of Malaya Party (IMP). The IMP was led by UMNO's founderOnn Jaafar and enjoyed support from several MCA leaders – including MCA president Tan Cheng Lock – due to the party's non-communal stance.[2][5][11]
Lee had attracted Yahya's attention with the election manifesto he penned for Selangor MCA, which declared that "the interests of the members of the other communities should also be represented" despite Kuala Lumpur's large Chinese population. Yahya then contacted formerVictoria Institution schoolmateOng Yoke Lin, another MCA leader, who fixed a meeting of representatives from MCA and UMNO. On 7 January 1952, both sides agreed to contest jointly in elections, fielding 12 candidates – five Malays, six Chinese and one Indian.[11]
The local electoral pact was at first opposed from within both MCA and UMNO. Senior MCA leadersTan Siew Sin andKhoo Teik Ee declared during the campaign period that the party's central working committee had not approved the alliance and called on voters to support the non-racial IMP. Yahya was accused of selling out the Malays by working with the Chinese and his division headDatin Putih Mariah resigned just days before elections in protest.[11]
In the end, the UMNO-MCA ticket won 9 of the 12 seats contested in Kuala Lumpur, failing only to win any seat inBangsar. In the weeks after the Kuala Lumpur elections, Lee was in contact with UMNO presidentTunku Abdul Rahman, who mooted a nationwide alliance of the two parties. Despite some initial reluctance, Tan Cheng Lock, who had preferred to work with Onn, eventually agreed to meet Tunku together with Lee on 18 March 1952 to discuss the merger. After several more rounds of talks with other MCA leaders, the Alliance Party was institutionalised.[2]
Lee had managed to bring Tan around to his point of view by alerting him to the Select Committee's Report on theImmigration Ordinance of 1950, in which Onn was a signatory to a Majority Report with recommendations that were unfavourable to the Chinese and were opposed by Chinese members of theLegislative Council. This raised doubts in Tan's mind about Onn's commitment to multi-racial fairness.[11]
The Alliance would go on to sweep local elections held elsewhere that year and decisively win the1955 general election to form the first locally elected government, with Tunku as chief minister. Lee was appointed transport minister, one of three portfolios held by MCA inTunku's Cabinet.[12]
In 1956, Lee andTan Tong Hye were selected to represent MCA as part of an Alliance delegation that went to London to pressure Britain into granting independence to Malaya. Lee was the only Chinese signatory to the independence agreement concluded in London that year.[2][12] Withindependence in 1957, Tunku, now prime minister, appointed Lee as Malaya's first finance minister. His primary task included establishing the country's financial policy and the creation of aCentral Bank of Malaya. Lee resigned from the post two years later due to ill health.[5]
Upon retiring from politics in 1959, Lee assumed the post of Financial chairman for theBoard of Commissioners of Currency, Malaya until 1961. In 1966, he established theDevelopment and Commercial Bank (D&C Bank), which became Malaysia's fifth largest bank. He would head the bank until his death in 1988.[6]
Lee was a keen sportsman and avid golfer. He was appointed president of the Senior Golfers Club as well as the Golf Association of Malaya in 1957. Between 1957 and 1959, he headed theFederation of Malaya Olympics Council. In addition, he practisedtaijiquan for health reasons.[7]
Lee was the first president of the Oxford and Cambridge Society of Malaysia.[13]
He also foundedChina Press in 1946 to counter the communist influence of Min Sheng Pao, the only local Chinese newspaper at that time.[3][6]
Lee met his first wife Dawn Kathleen Glen, an Englishwoman, while studying at Cambridge. They had two sons, Douglas and Vivien Leslie, in Hong Kong. Glen returned to Britain for good with Vivien after falling afoul of Lee's mother, who disliked her daughter-in-law's penchant for smoking and sports cars. Lee married his second wife, Kwan Choi Lin, with whom he had seven more children. He named his children after the places where they were born.[14]
Lee had a grandson named Kenneth Lee Fook Mun, alias Omar Iskandar Lee Abdullah, who was involved in aroad rage incident which resulted in the fatal shooting of a female accountant named Linda Lee Good Yew in August 2000. Kenneth was initially sentenced to 8 years in prison forculpable homicide in July 2003. But subsequently, in March 2005, upon the prosecution's appeal to the higher courts of Malaysia (Court of Appeal of Malaysia), he was found guilty of murder andsentenced to death, which was affirmed by the highest court of Malaysia (Federal Court of Malaysia) a year later. However, in January 2008, while awaiting execution, he was granted clemency by theYang di-Pertuan Agong, leading to his death sentence being commuted tolife imprisonment.[15]
Two of his sons also entered politics. Dato' Douglas Lee Kim Kiu (1924–2022) contested successfully in the 1952 Kuala Lumpur municipal elections whilst Tan Sri Alexander Lee Yu Lung (1938–1999) was briefly in the MCA before joiningGerakan and assumed several deputy minister posts between 1989 and 1995.[3]
Lee was appointed a Commander of theOrder of the British Empire (CBE) in 1948 by King George VI and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1957 byQueen Elizabeth II in recognition of his services to theBritish colonial government.[7]
In 1959, Lee was awarded theSeri Maharaja Mangku Negara, which carries with it the title "Tun", for his significant contributions to Malaya's independence struggle and nation-building. He was the 10th recipient of the award.[7]
Jalan Bandar, originally known as High Street, was renamed Jalan Tun H.S. Lee in his honour in November 1988.[5]
Malaya_-_SMN.svg)
Grand Commander of theOrder of the Defender of the Realm (SMN) –Tun (1959)[16]United Kingdom_Ribbon.png)
Commander of theOrder of the British Empire (CBE) (1948)[17] Knight Commander of theOrder of the British Empire (KBE) –Sir (1957)[18]