Zhang Junsheng

Zhang Junsheng (; 1 July 1936 – 19 February 2018) was a Chinese optical engineer, politician, and academic administrator. He spent 25 years as an engineering professor at Zhejiang University and won two national science and technology awards, before entering politics and being sent to Hong Kong in 1985 to prepare for the British colony's return to China. During his tenure as Beijing's chief spokesman in Hong Kong, he fiercely clashed with Chris Patten, the last British governor in Hong Kong, over the latter's effort to implement political reforms over Beijing's objection. Their public dispute dominated news headlines in Hong Kong. After the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong on 1 July 1997, Zhang returned to Zhejiang University to serve as its Party Secretary. He oversaw the school's merger with three other universities and used his Hong Kong connections to raise funds for the university.

Early life and scientific career Zhang was born in 1936 in Changting County, Fujian Province. After graduating from high school in 1954, he was admitted to Zhejiang University (ZJU) in Hangzhou, where he studied optical engineering. At the university he met his future wife Yang Huiyi , a student from Shanghai. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1956, and was hired by the university as a faculty member after his graduation in 1958.

In the 1960s, he and his colleagues designed a solar telescope. After the delay caused by the Cultural Revolution, it was put into production in the 1970s and won a National Science and Technology Prize (second class) in 1982. Zhang was assigned to the Hong Kong branch of the Xinhua News Agency, the de facto Chinese embassy in British Hong Kong, to work for the preparation of the handover. Pro-establishment Hong Kong lawmakers Chan Yuen-han and Tam Yiu-chung praised Zhang as "learned", "open to different perspectives", and principled, whereas Cheung Man-kwong, former lawmaker of the Democratic Party, said "Zhang, representing Beijing, made very stern criticisms against the pan-democrats."