13th September 2026 – (Hong Kong) Funeral rites for Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive and a former vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, are understood to be planned on state-funeral lines, with the national flag draped on the casket and a ceremony in Hong Kong as early as next Sunday, 20th September.
Tung died on 8th September aged 89. As a leader of vice-national rank, his mourning arrangements are being watched closely. Online talk that Sha Tin racing scheduled for that Sunday might shift a day earlier drew a Hong Kong Jockey Club reply that any change to the race card would be announced in due course.
Hong Kong has seen two earlier CPPCC vice-chairmen farewelled at comparable national grade: Ann Tse-kai in 2000 and Henry Fok Ying-tung in 2006. Ann’s service was the first post-handover funeral to use state-leader protocol. It was held at the Hong Kong Funeral Home in North Point, with then CPPCC vice-chairman Ye Xuanping as funeral committee chair and then vice-chairmen Wang Zhaoguo and Fok, plus then chief executive Tung, as deputy chairs. The rite mixed Hong Kong custom — three bows and a pall-bearing party — with ten bearers including Tung, Fok and Leung Chun-ying, and a flag-draped coffin. Condolence messages arrived from senior leaders including Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Zhu Rongji, Li Ruihuan and Hu Jintao.
Fok’s funeral was co-ordinated by the central authorities. Then CPPCC vice-chairman Wang Zhongyu chaired the mourning committee; deputies included Liao Hui, then CPPCC vice-chairman and Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office director; Liu Yandong, then CPPCC vice-chairman and United Front Work Department head; Tung; and then chief executive Donald Tsang. Ten men bore the coffin, among them then Liaison Office director Gao Siren, then HKMAO deputy director Chen Zuo’er and Tung. Then president Hu Jintao and former president Jiang Zemin sent wreaths. The flag-covered casket was taken to the Buddhist cemetery in Chai Wan; before burial three People’s Liberation Army personnel removed the flag, folded it left and right six times into a dark brown wooden box and presented it to Fok’s principal wife, Lui Yin-nei. Geomancer Choi Pak-lai then conducted a brief grave-blessing rite before the coffin was lowered.
Tung had himself helped carry the coffins at both Ann’s and Fok’s funerals. Those precedents — flag, central mourning structure and Hong Kong ceremonial elements — frame what sources now describe for his own farewell: state-funeral specification, a national flag on the bier, and a Hong Kong date eyed for 20th September at the earliest.