Bowie Hau Chi-keung

Bowie Hau Chi-keung (; born 1956) is a rural leader and businessman in Hong Kong. He is the current chairman of the Sheung Shui Rural Committee, ex officio executive committee member of the Heung Yee Kuk and ex officio member of the North District Council.

Family and early life Hau is born in Ho Sheung Heung, Sheung Shui, New Territories in Hong Kong into the Hau clan, one of the five great clans in the New Territories in 1956. His father was a sailor and his mother was a farmer. He was the eldest of seven siblings. Hau got a job as a dockworker when he was just 13 and was convicted of theft when he was 18. As a village representative, Hau sat on the Sheung Shui Rural Committee and became chairman of the rural committee since 2007. As the chairman of the rural committee, he has also been ex officio member of the North District Council.

In 2011, he defeated horse trainer Brian Kan by 44 to 16 votes to retain his post as chairman. Kan was later found out engaging in corrupt conduct during an election. It was revealed in the court that Hau had recorded some of Kan's meetings in which the bribery was taken place and even had a video recording.

Hau is a vociferous supporter of the government's controversial plans to establish a new town in northeast New Territories. His clan owns 93 hectares of land in Kwu Tung North, and would receive more than HK$5 billion in compensation for development. He had also declared repeatedly that even the Hau clan's ancestral hall could be sold for the right price. Hau dismisses farmers who refuse to vacate the land as unscrupulous squatters. He was sued by an 85-year-old farmer Lau Oi-kiu in 2015 of dumping waste on her farmland in Ho Sheung Heung to drive her off in 2009. Hau was branded "contemptuous of the law" and had to pay Lau HK$1.41 million in compensation.

As the chairman of the Sheung Shui Rural Committee, Hau is an ex officio executive committee member of the Heung Yee Kuk, a powerful organ which oversees 600 villages and 1,500 village chiefs and represents the rural interests. He fiercely attacks calls for the government to end its Small House Policy, which allows male descendants of indigenous residents to apply to build a village house of up to three-storeys, on a site of no more than 700 square feet, without paying a premium for conversion of land use. However, his plan was opposed by other faction in the Kuk. The inauguration ceremony of the New Progressive Alliance was cancelled in the last minute. He later quit the Liberal Party and ran as an independent in the election.