About the book

The Economist once described Christine Loh as perhaps the Hong Kong Legislative Council’s ‘most gifted’ politician, and yet she chose not to stand for re-election in 2000 when she was considered a sure winner. She was an important figure with international stature among a new generation of Hong Kong politicians bridging the transition from British to Chinese rule. She championed a variety of important legislative initiatives — equal opportunity, access to information, open meetings, corruption prevention, and protection of Victoria Harbour. Since she left frontline politics, she created Civic Exchange, arguably Hong Kong’s most prolific public policy think tank today.

Christine Loh records how she has become the person she is today in these pages. She examines the legacies from her Cantonese and Shanghainese families. She writes affectionately about family members — not only in terms of the roles they played in shaping her views and character, but also against the backdrop of Hong Kong and Chinese history. She acts with missionary zeal and represents a front-runner in promoting participatory politics.

Being Here — Shaping a Preferred Future engages the reader to think, sets the record straight about a number of important public events, and reveals many surprises about the background of one of the city’s best-known public figures.

About the author

Christine Loh is one of the few members of the younger generation who had been directly involved in Hong Kong’s transition from British to Chinese rule. As chair of the foremost political group in the 1980s — the Hong Kong Observers — before Hong Kong had any political parties, Loh was involved in shaping the public debate on the transfer of power. Loh was a prominent legislator with many legislative victories — she was first appointed to Legco in 1992 and ran two successful direct elections in 1995 and 1998. Prior to her political career, she had a successful career as a commodities trader. Today, she runs Civic Exchange, a non-profit policy think tank, and was elected in April 2006 by shareholders to be a director of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.