Tung Chee-Chen

Speech by the Public Orator

Vice- Chancellor,

Tung Chee-Chen was born in Shanghai in 1943, into an already very successful family which has moved to Hong Kong in 1948. His father, Tung Chao Yung, was a self-made man who has started his career as a banker in Hong Kong, and had progressed through an involvement in the bank’s shipping department to found his own ocean shipping company. That company grew under his leadership to make him one of the largest independent shipowners in the world, with a fleet consisting of container vessels, tankers, bulk carriers and passenger ships. Ting Chee Chen’s father dedicated his entire career to the modernisation of China’s sea transport capacity. He also raised two remarkable sons, Chee-Chen, known as CC, and Chee-Hwa, known as CH. CH ran the family business after his father, and then in 1996 became the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Administrative Region after the handover back to China in 1999. He is a graduate and honorary graduate of this University.

Today we are honouring the younger son, CC. In spite of the family’s success in Hong Kong, as a boy CC was nevertheless made to understand the need for hard work, and the ability to stand on his own feet. He attended a boarding school in Hong Kong, where he learned independence, and how to cope with life away from his family. This experience stood him in very good stead when in 1959 he followed in the footsteps of his older brother, and travelled to the United Kingdom with the intention of enrolling, like his brother, as an engineering student at The University of Liverpool. He found himself living on Mount Pleasant in the Methodist International House. But he was not yet qualified to enter the first undergraduate year at the University, so for two years he commuted everyday, and sometimes in the evening as well, on the underground form Liverpool Central to Hamilton Square in Birkenhead, from where he took a threepenny bus ride to Birkenhead Tech, where he completed all his O-levels in one year, and all his A-levels in another year, in order to begin his degree in the Engineering Faculty at Liverpool in 1961.

After three happy years studying at Liverpool University, CC graduated with a BEng in Mechanical Engineering, and then went on to take a Masters degree in the same subject at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  After completing his studies he started work as a research engineer with General Electrics in Boston. But he already knew he would be working in the family business, and he spent the next twenty years living and working in Manhattan in the New York office of the shipping company. He finally returned to Hong Kong in the business headquarters in Hong Kong in 1986, and after working in various senior roles he finally succeeded his brother as Chairman and Chief Executive in 1996, roles he holds to this day.

Today the Tung family shipping business trades as Orient Overseas (International) Limited. It is one of Hong Kong’s most potent and recognised global brands, operating successfully even through the recent torrid economic climate with total revenues of some 6.5 billion US dollars, and more than 280 offices in 55 countries. The company, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange but with the Tung family still majority shareholders, has interests in transport and logistic services, and property development and investment. It is one of the world’s largest integrated international transportation, logistics and terminal companies. For Tung Chee-Chen, who bears the ultimate responsibility for the well-being of the company, the biggest development and challenge he has had to face has been the accelerating process of globalisation over the past ten years, especially following China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation. In spite of such burdensome responsibilities, he has worked hard to make a wider contribution, to the business community in Hong Kong, but also to the broader economic development of China. He has served in senior roles in many important organisations, including periods as Chairman of the Hong Kong Ship Owners Association and the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce. And in the strong tradition of his father’s belief in the fundamental importance of education, he has also served on the governing bodies of several universities in Asia and the United States.

Tung Chee-Chen has not forgotten his own University. With his brother Tung Chee Hwa he is a leading member of the University’s highly successful Hong Kong Alumni Association. He is also currently involved in an ambitious project to create a CY Tung Institute of Marine Studies as a collaboration between Shanghai Jiaotong University and the University of Liverpool. As he sees it, the motivating force of this Institute is the vital need to modernise supply chain management on a global scale. His own company is the acknowledged world leader in the use of IT and e-commerce to manage large-scale logistics. In a country the size of China, where progress depends on the efficient movement of goods, it is vital to develop the management of the supply chain and maritime logistics. This area is a major research strength of our own Management School, and working together with our Chinese partners in the coming years we can make a real different to the future development of China and its dealings with the wider world.

This University, like the city of Liverpool, has particularly strong links with China, through our many Chinese alumni, out current Chinese students, and not least our own University, Xian Jiaotong Liverpool University in Suzhou near Shanghai. It is most fitting then that today we honour one of our most successful Chinese graduates.

Vice-Chancellor, in the name of the Council and Senate of the University, I present to you for admission to the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, in this University, Tung Chee-Chen.