Ng Hong-mun

Ng Hong-mun died on the morning of 18 October 2026 in Hong Kong, aged 100. The Pui Kiu Education Foundation announced that its honorary chairman had died peacefully with his family at his side. The cause of death was not made public.

Former Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, a vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, wrote on social media that he deeply mourned Principal Ng. Political scientist Lau Siu-kai told Sing Tao that Ng was easy-going, studious, objective, humorous and a model of the scholar. DAB adviser Tam Yiu-chung said Ng had driven patriotic education and much of Pui Kiu's growth was down to him, and Legislative Council President Starry Lee praised his commitment to the country, to Hong Kong and to education. His death was reported by the South China Morning Post, TVB, HK01, Sing Tao and DimSum Daily. Funeral arrangements had not been announced.

Ng Hong-mun was born on 9 April 1926 in Huilai County, Guangdong, in the Chaoshan area around Shantou; some Hong Kong sources give his birthplace simply as Shantou. His Chinese name is 吳康民, and English-language sources spell it both Ng Hong-mun and Ng Hon-mun.

He studied chemical engineering at National Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and graduated in 1947. Instead of becoming an engineer he moved to Hong Kong that year to teach at Pui Kiu Middle School, which had opened in 1946. In a later interview with Pui Kiu students he said that he and his colleagues had once thought of starting a newspaper, but decided a school would better link patriotic overseas Chinese and Hong Kong youth with the changes taking place in China.

Ng taught at Pui Kiu from 1947 and is regarded as one of the school's founding figures. In 1958 the colonial government deported the principal, accusing him of political activity, and Ng took over as principal and supervisor. He recalled that agents sent by the government kept watch on him, and that parents, many of them taxi drivers, warned the school of what was coming and once hid him in their homes. He said he never thought of giving up and that the harder things were, the more he fought to survive, because he could not let down the parents and students who supported the school.

He remained principal until 1985 and then served as supervisor. He became chairman of the school board in 1997 and in 2005 chairman of the Pui Kiu Education Foundation, which by then ran Pui Kiu Middle School, Pui Kiu Primary School, opened in 2000, and Pui Kiu College, a through-train school opened in 2005 with English and Putonghua as teaching languages. He was later the foundation's honorary chairman.

In 1975 he organised the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers and was elected its founding president, later becoming honorary president. The Education University of Hong Kong made him an honorary fellow.

Ng was elected to the 4th National People's Congress, which was delayed by political turmoil in Beijing and finally met in January 1975. He represented Guangdong in the 4th to 8th congresses and Hong Kong in the 9th and 10th, serving on the presidium of both and leading the Hong Kong delegation to the 9th NPC. With 33 years in the national legislature he was the longest-serving deputy from Hong Kong. Reviewing his time there before retiring in 2008, he said in an RTHK interview that the Hong Kong government had only recently begun to consult the city's deputies properly.

In 1992 he was a founding member of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong and was appointed a Hong Kong Affairs Adviser. He joined the Preliminary Working Committee in 1993 and the Preparatory Committee for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in late 1995, and in 1996 sat on the Selection Committee that chose the first post-handover government. On 1 July 1997 he was appointed to the Basic Law Committee of the NPC Standing Committee, and he was reappointed in 2003. Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa awarded him the Grand Bauhinia Medal on 1 July 1998.

He was a long-running columnist for Ming Pao and did not shy away from controversy. In March 2014 he wrote that Hong Kong had reached a critical point between chaos and order and warned that the Occupy Central movement could leave the city ungovernable. He also traded sharp words in print with figures from the Liberal Party and the Civic Party.

Ng was a keen writer whose books included memoirs and essays on his years in the National People's Congress. In April 2011 he and his wife were hosted at dinner by Premier Wen Jiabao and his wife in Beijing, during a visit for the anniversary of Tsinghua University.

At his 88th birthday he declared that he would live past 100. In April 2026 the Hong Kong Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce, where he was honorary chairman, celebrated his centenary, and Pui Kiu alumni held a birthday banquet at which four generations of his family were photographed together. A Wen Wei Po columnist wrote that in his last years his memory had faded but he still sometimes attended community events in a wheelchair and enjoyed regular lunches with friends.

Ng helped build Pui Kiu from a small school under pressure from the colonial authorities into an education group running three schools, and the Pui Kiu Education Foundation described him as a cornerstone of patriotic education in Hong Kong. Among Pui Kiu's former pupils is Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun.

His 33 years in the National People's Congress spanned the late Cultural Revolution, the reform era and the first decade after the handover, making him one of the longest-serving links between Hong Kong and the national legislature.