Hope for Hong Kong
John Tsang on empowering the people of Hong Kong
ith his silver hair and thick moustache, John Tsang is an instantly recognisable figure in Hong Kong. He’s often likened in appearance to the character on Pringles packaging and referred to affectionately as Mr or Uncle Pringles. It’s a title he has clearly embraced: the Chinese name for his new social enterprise translates as Uncle Pringles Cooperative.
Feelings for Tsang among Hongkongers certainly appear fond. As we photograph him in the leafy environs of Hong Kong Park on a sunny autumn afternoon, passersby pause and linger, taking snaps on their smartphones of the familiar figure. Tsang waves and smiles warmly, offering us a glimpse of the man who campaigned against Carrie Lam for the position of the city’s chief executive in 2017.
Tsang says that as he goes about his day- to-day business, members of the public often approach him. “When I go out, many people will come up to me and say that they are losing hope, that they want to emigrate. I will usually advise them that this really doesn’t solve your problems and that maybe a more proactive way is to try to deal with them a small piece at a time to try and make the environment better for yourself and for your children.”
Tsang’s new enterprise, also known as Esperanza, strives to do the same—to create hope by chipping away at some of Hong Kong’s most pressing issues. Its name is Spanish for “hope”; he chose the language, he says, because “It denotes globality—it’s something much wider than just the English-speaking world.”
Through Esperanza Tsang aims to partner with organisations that have similar objectives to his own, which focus on tackling challenges in education, health and wellbeing, and
“I’m an optimist. I think the future is in your own hands and you cannot be passive in terms of allowing things to happen to you. When you see things that are not to your liking there are things that you can do”
the future of work. As the enterprise’s Chinese name suggests, the emphasis is on collaboration. Tsang plans to support the organisations he chooses by guiding them personally and tapping into his own network for additional expertise.
The first organisation that Tsang has chosen to work with is Teach For Hong Kong, a leadership training programme that revolves around education. “Education is one of the most pressing issues in the world,” says Tsang. “I haven’t seen a system anywhere that’s really preparing students properly for the future, given that we live longer and we are facing a lot of technological changes. We are not revising our curriculum in a way that enables students to make better use of all that. We don’t need to concentrate all of the educational resources in the first 20 years of our lives.”
Teach For Hong Kong aims to recruit fresh graduates from some of the world’s most prestigious universities to go into schools and assist in teaching STEM subjects and English to underprivileged children, developing skills that will make them more employable. Tsang hopes to link the Teach for Hong Kong programme with corporations, convincing businesses that graduates of the programme really are the cream of the crop and providing incentives to graduates to join the programme before going out into the corporate world, such as streamlined access to certain jobs when they do so.
Tsang sees opportunities to expand the programme to include other groups, such as people with established careers who want to take a break to engage in something more purposeful, or people who have retired. “I don’t believe in the concept of retirement,” he says, “but these people have time, experience and energy, and can contribute.”
Teach For Hong Kong is just the beginning. Educational tech and Hong Kong’s ageing population are also hot issues for Tsang, but it all starts with education, as teaching was once the career path he thought he would follow. He trained as an architect, studying at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, before completing a master’s in bilingual education at Boston State College as well as gaining a Master of Public Administration from Harvard. He then worked as a teacher and curriculum developer in Boston before returning to Hong Kong, where his career options opened up: he had to decide whether to accept an offer to become a headmaster or take up a position in government. He chose the latter, and the rest is history.
After more than three decades in the Hong Kong government, including a stint as Hong Kong’s longest-serving financial secretary, from 2007 to 2017, Tsang has a large network, strengthened by his diverse interests: he teaches fencing one day a week at a high school in Kowloon, practises martial arts and has a weekly radio show featuring music from the 1960s and 70s. He also plays guitar and dubs movies.
It certainly feels like Tsang knows a lot of people. During our interview we pause several times for him to get up and greet old friends passing our table. He’s also big online, something he leveraged during his election campaign. His personal Facebook page currently boasts more than 315,000 followers and almost 300,000 likes. While Tsang wasn’t given the opportunity to make an impact as chief executive, all this will help with Esperanza.
“When I first joined the government in the 80s it was because I thought that through policy was the most efficient way of impacting a larger mass of people. I’ve done this kind of political work for the last 30-something years. I can find other means. I can try to impact from a corporate angle, from a non-profit angle. It’s a multifaceted world and there are so many different things that you can do, and every little positive piece can add to a much bigger picture.”
It’s not just up to Tsang, of course; everyone can do something to make Hong Kong a better place, he says, and he remains hopeful for Hong Kong and its future.
“I’m an optimist. I think the future is in your own hands and you cannot be passive in terms of allowing things to happen to you. When you see things that are not to your liking there are things that you can do: work with like-minded people and make things happen a small slice at a time.”