Ronny Tong Ka-wah was born on 28 August 1950 and is a Hong Kong Senior Counsel of Xinhui ancestry and a Justice of the Peace. A graduate of Queen's College, he holds an LLB with first-class honours from the University of Hong Kong and a BCL from the University of Oxford, was called to the Bar in the United Kingdom in 1974 and practised in Hong Kong from 1975, taking silk in 1990. He chaired the Hong Kong Bar Association from 1999 to 2001, served twice as a Deputy Judge of the High Court, in 1992 and 2002, and was a member of the Economic and Employment Council. In 2003 he joined Leong Kah-kit and Audrey Eu in forming the Article 23 Concern Group to oppose hasty national-security legislation, which later became the Article 45 Concern Group. A founding member of the Civic Party, set up in 2006, he was elected to the Legislative Council for New Territories East in 2004 and served until 2015, acting as vice-chairman of the House Committee from 2012 to 2015. He argued that the pro-democracy camp should engage more with Beijing, opposed the Civic Party's participation in the 2010 five-constituency referendum and repeatedly criticised his party colleagues, drawing discontent from fellow democrats. In 2015, after voting with the democrats to reject the political reform package, he announced he was quitting the party and resigning his seat. In June that year he founded the centrist think tank Path of Democracy, which fielded candidates in the 2016 Legislative Council election without success and was renamed the PoD Research Institute in 2025, with Tong as its director and convenor. Appointed a non-official member of the Executive Council on 1 July 2017, he occupies a centre-to-establishment position and in 2019 supported the extradition bill amendment. In 2022 he was awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star.
Tong has long promoted discussion of the rule of law between the Bar and the legislature, and in 2015 he founded the centrist think tank Path of Democracy to chart a course between the establishment and the pro-democracy camp. He later joined the Executive Council, advising the government on constitutional and legal matters.
Achievements
- 1990 · Took silk as a Queen's Counsel (now Senior Counsel).
- 2004 · Was elected to the Legislative Council for the New Territories East constituency, serving until 2015.
- 2017 · Was appointed a non-official member of the Executive Council.