Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee (; Lau; born 24 August 1950) is a Hong Kong politician. She is currently the Convenor of the Executive Council (ExCo) as well as the founder and current chairperson of the New People's Party. Ip served as a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo) from 2008 to 2025, representing Hong Kong Island and Hong Kong Island West. She was formerly a prominent government official of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and was the first woman to be appointed the Secretary for Security to head the disciplinary service. She is also the founder and Chairlady of Savantas Policy Institute, a think-tank in Hong Kong.
Ip became a controversial figure for her role advocating the passage of the national security legislation to implement Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23, and after this legislation was withdrawn, she became the first principal official to resign from the administration of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa. She took a sabbatical to study for a master's degree. She contested the 2007 Hong Kong Island by-election for the Legislative Council but was defeated by Anson Chan in the two-horse race. She ran again in the 2008 Legislative Council election and won, gaining a seat in the Hong Kong Island. She was re-elected in the 2012 and 2016 elections.
Ip is widely known to have been keen on the Chief Executive top post. She ran in both 2012 and 2017 Chief Executive elections but did not secure a minimum number of 150 nominations from the 1,200-member Election Committee to enter the race on both occasions. In 2020, Larry Diamond, her supervisor at Stanford University, publicly criticized Ip's handling of the democracy movement and freedom of the press in Hong Kong.
Early life Ip was born in what was then British Hong Kong in 1950; her father was Chinese Singaporean trader Lau Fook-seng, and her mother was actress Wa Choi-Fung (華彩鳳), the second wife of her father. She attended St. Stephen's Girls' College,Regina Ip (2 December 2006). "I remember being told to cultivate vices" The South China Morning Post after which she read English literature at the University of Hong Kong, graduating with first-class honours; she later obtained a Master of Letters degree from the University of Glasgow,Shamdasani, Ravina (17 July 2003). Ip was undone by Article 23, The South China Morning Post where she studied Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney.
Government career In the 1970s, Ip joined the Hong Kong Government as an Administrative Officer. In 1986, she, accompanied by her husband, went to the Stanford Graduate School of Business to study for an MS in Management under the Sloan Programme."Regina Ip a mentor to her fellow HK students at Stanford" , South China Morning Post, 9 July 2006, Stanford University She took various bureaucratic positions before she was appointed Director of Industry Department in September 1995.
Ministerial career In August 1996, she was appointed Director of Immigration – a post usually filled by officials from within the Immigration Department. She was the first woman to hold the post, and continued until after the 1997 handover. While she held that post, the UK government decided to grant full British citizenship for 50,000 Hong Kong families. She was also head of immigration during the right of abode saga, when the Hong Kong government requested the National People's Congress in Beijing to intervene after the courts ruled against the government, essentially granting the Hong Kong government the ability to simply ignore the court's ruling after it granted right of abode to the children of Hong Kong residents who held right of abode whether or not those children were born in Hong Kong.
In July 1998, Ip was appointed to the post of Secretary for Security"迎向燦爛的未來". Ming Pao. News Weekly 1810, and 19 July 2003. – again, the first woman to hold that post. She became the first government minister to "declare her political stance".
Ip became one of the so-called 14 principal officials and a member of the Executive Council during Tung Chee-hwa's second term in government on 1 July 2002. She was well known at that time as a hawkish, uncompromising figure in the Government, with some describing her as "a staunch, arrogant, authoritarian and yet outspoken bureaucrat". As security minister, she promoted the adoption of the controversial Article 23 of Hong Kong's Basic Law. After massive public protests and the government's withdrawal of the proposed national security legislation, Ip resigned from office on 25 June 2003, citing personal reasons.
Political career In 2003, Ip returned to Stanford University to pursue a master's degree in East Asian Studies, with Larry Diamond as her supervisor. Her thesis, Hong Kong: Case Study in Democratic Development in Transitional Society, reportedly expressed admiration for a bicameral system and suggested that political parties in Hong Kong be strengthened and be more inclusive. She returned to Hong Kong in 2006. She set up a policy think tank, Savantas Policy Institute, giving rise to media speculation that she was planning to run for the office of Chief Executive sometime in the future. In September 2007, she declared her intention to run for the Legislative Council in the Hong Kong Island by-election. She apologised for her handling of the Article 23 situation and hoped to put it behind her. However, she received only 43% of the vote, defeated by Anson Chan.
Legislative Councillor Ip ran in the 2008 Hong Kong legislative election in the Hong Kong Island geographical constituency, forming a ticket including dermatologist Louis Shih and two elected District Councillors, Albert Wong and Ronald Chan. Her ticket won a total of 61,073 votes, the second highest on Hong Kong Island and the fourth highest Hong Kong wide. She was sworn in as Legislative Councillor on 8 October 2008.
In January 2011, she launched a middle-class oriented party called New People's Party. The party held two seats in the legislature, herself and Michael Tien, after the 2012 Legislative council election, in which Ip was elected with 30,289 votes, despite losing almost half of the votes. She was subsequently appointed to the Executive Council of Hong Kong by Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying after the election, in which she served until December 2016 when she ran for the Chief Executive for the second time. Her party expanded its district base when it allied with the Civil Force in 2014. Ip was re-elected to the Legislative Council in 2016, with the highest votes of 60,760 in Hong Kong Island.
2012 Chief Executive bid
Ip was known to be interested in the Chief Executive post. She expressed her intention to run in the 2012 election but dropped out on 15 December. Following a number of scandals surrounding Henry Tang, Ip re-announced her candidacy in the race on 20 February. She withdrew her candidacy after failing to receive enough nominations before the deadline and thus did not qualify to stand for the election on 29 February, which made her campaign last for only nine days."Regina Ip fails in bid to join CE race" . RTHK. 29 February 2012
2017 Chief Executive bid
Ip has expressed her intention to consider running in the 2017 Chief Executive election. After incumbent Leung Chun-ying announced he would not seek for re-election, Ip resigned from the Executive Council to launch her campaign. She announced her candidacy on 15 December under the campaign slogan "Win back Hong Kong" after receiving her party's endorsement. She called for a relaunch of the electoral reform process under Beijing's restrictive framework as decreed by the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) on 31 August 2020. She also pledged to enact controversial Article 23 with "suitable measures".
Ip got emotional and tear-eyed in a media gathering, "[I]n the past ten years I started from nothing, working hard bit by bit, splashing out my own money, putting in much mental and physical effort," Ip said as her voice shook. "Can you say I had not taken on responsibilities for the Hong Kong society? When I handled Article 23, I did not perform satisfactorily?" she defended herself, "I have taken responsibility under the accountability system and have already apologised multiple times. I was not shameless, I did not hold onto my powers. I stepped down from the administration. I'll leave for society to judge whether I have the guts to take on responsibilities. I definitely have taken on a lot of responsibilities." Ip's remarks came after Leung Chun-ying praised Lam for her "ability and willingness to take on responsibilities" As Carrie Lam declared her candidacy and Tsang was expected to run, political analysts said that could endanger Ip's chances of getting the minimum 150 nominations to enter the race. Ip revealed that two or three electors, including businessman Allan Zeman, have turned their backs on her to support Lam.
Supported by her New People's Party and a few electors from business sectors, Ip also gained a nomination from a pro-democrat elector from the Accountancy subsector, who wished to send Ip into the race to split Lam's votes. However, as Lam aimed to grab more than 600 nominations, Ip faced an uphill battle to secure her nominations. She urged "a certain candidate" not to ask for additional backing since that person had secured more than enough nominations already. Ip withdrew from the election, conceding the number of nominations hours before the nomination deadline on 1 March, for the second time after her 2012 bid. She received the number of nominations "far behind what was needed". She attributed her failure to the restrictive selection process of the 1,200 structure of the Election Committee membership as she was "squeezed out" by the Beijing-supported Lam and democrats-supported Tsang and Woo.
Views
Ip has taken controversial stances during her career including advocating for the Public Order Ordinance and defending government policy denying right of abode to the children of Hong Kong people born in mainland China since the 1997 handover.
Article 23
According to Ku, Ip had turned herself into a provocative political figure due to her departure from the "institutionalised bureaucratic ritual" adopted by civil servants in the past."State Power, Political Theatre and Reinvention of the Pro-democracy Movement in Hong Kong" , Staging Politics (2007), chap 10. Agnes Shuk-mei Ku, Associate Professor of Social Sciences, HK University of Science and Technology She spearheaded the government's attempt to codify Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23, and pushed hard for it to be legislated by July 2003.Wong, Yiu-Chung. One Country, Two Systems in Crisis: Hong Kong's Transformation Since the Handover, Lexington Publishing. . Between September 2002 and July 2003, her popularity plunged. In October 2002, she made a remark about Adolf Hitler at the City University."Ip lashed on Hitler jibe" , The Standard, 28 October 2002
Ip downplayed any opposition to the bill, predicting only 30,000 people would show up at the planned demonstration(s).Pepper, Suzanne. Keeping Democracy at Bay (2007). Rowman & Littlefield. . Ip blamed political and religious leaders for creating a "herd mentality". Her popularity plummeted when one remark after another contradicted popular opinion, most notably in regard to her commitment to push the bill despite the commotion and chaos of the SARS outbreak in 2003.Carroll, John M. A Concise History of Hong Kong, 2007, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. .