Henry Lee Hau Shik

Sir Henry Lee Hau Shik (; 19 November 1900 – 22 June 1988), also known as H. S. Lee, was a Malaysian politician and businessman who served as the Minister of Finance and Minister of Transport under former Chief Minister and former Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman from August 1955 to August 1959 during which time Federation of Malaya gained independence from Britain in August 1957. He co-founded the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and Alliance Party (Alliance), the predecessor of the Barisan Nasional (BN). He was also a member of the Merdeka mission to London and the only Chinese signatory to the Malayan independence agreement with Britain. He was the only major leader of the independence movement not born in Malaya, instead, he was born in British Hong Kong.

Early life and education

Henry Lee Hau Shik was born on 19 November 1900 in Hong Kong, the eldest son of prominent and wealthy businessman Lee Kwai-Lim and Kam Kwok-Chun. His family ran a silk-trading firm, Kam Lun Tai, which later branched into remittance and mining, with offices in Hong Kong and Singapore. He had two brothers and two sisters.

Lee's great-grandfather had been a senior official during the reign of Emperor Tongzhi of the Qing dynasty while his grandfather was a famous scholar and philanthropist in his hometown of Zhenlong, Xinyi in Guangdong.

Lee received his secondary education in Guangzhou in 1914, before attending Queen's College in Hong Kong. He completed degrees in Economics and Law at the University of London and St John's College, Cambridge, where he came to know the future King George VI. He then worked at P&O Bank in Hong Kong.

In Malaya, Lee was deeply involved in Chinese guild and clan associations and became a recognised leader of the Guangdong and Gaozhou communities.

At various times, he was president of the Selangor Kwang Tung Association, National Kwang Tung Association, Pan-Malayan Kochow Association, United Lees' Association, Federation of Malaya Red Cross Association and Kuen Cheng Girls School. He was later made Chief of the Passive Defence Forces of Kuala Lumpur in 1941. Due to his anti-Japanese war efforts, Lee was forced to flee with his family to Mumbai via Chongqing when the war reached Malaya that same year and the Japanese put out a bounty on him.

Lee was made a colonel in the Kuomintang army, then based in Burma, after meeting Chiang Kai-shek in Chongqing. Later, Lee was also made a colonel of the British Army in India and liaised between the two Allied armies along the China-Burma border for the remainder of the war.

Lee was also involved in founding the central body of the MCA in 1949. He drafted the party's rules and regulations together with Yong Shook Lin and Khoo Teik Ee, and was instrumental in getting Tan Cheng Lock to become chairman of the MCA steering committee and its first president.

Lee had attracted Yahya's attention with the election manifesto he penned for Selangor MCA, which declared that "the interests of the members of the other communities should also be represented" despite Kuala Lumpur's large Chinese population. Yahya then contacted former Victoria Institution schoolmate Ong Yoke Lin, another MCA leader, who fixed a meeting of representatives from MCA and UMNO. On 7 January 1952, both sides agreed to contest jointly in elections, fielding 12 candidates – five Malays, six Chinese and one Indian.

Road to independence

In 1956, Lee and Tan Tong Hye were selected to represent MCA as part of an Alliance delegation that went to London to pressure Britain into granting independence to Malaya. Lee was the only Chinese signatory to the independence agreement concluded in London that year.

He also founded China Press in 1946 to counter the communist influence of Min Sheng Pao, the only local Chinese newspaper at that time.

Lee had a grandson named Kenneth Lee Fook Mun, alias Omar Iskandar Lee Abdullah, who was involved in a road rage incident in August 2000 in which he fatally shot a female accountant named Linda Lee Good Yew. Kenneth was initially sentenced to 8 years in prison for culpable homicide in July 2003. But subsequently, in March 2005, upon the prosecution's appeal to the higher courts of Malaysia (Court of Appeal of Malaysia), he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, which was affirmed by the highest court of Malaysia (Federal Court of Malaysia) a year later. However, in January 2008, while awaiting execution, he was granted clemency by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, leading to his death sentence being commuted to life imprisonment.

Two of his sons also entered politics. Dato' Douglas Lee Kim Kiu (1924–2022) contested successfully in the 1952 Kuala Lumpur municipal elections whilst Tan Sri Alexander Lee Yu Lung (1938–1999) was briefly in the MCA before joining Gerakan and assumed several deputy minister posts between 1989 and 1995.

Commonwealth honours