Dr The Honourable Lee Shau-kee, the founder and Executive Director of Henderson Land Development Company Limited, is a prominent business leader and a well-known philanthropist. Together with some close friends, he established the Hong Kong Pei Hua Education Foundation in 1982. The Foundation adopts a visionary approach to enhancing human resources and providing educational and training opportunities in mainland China. So far it has sponsored and organised more than 670 programmes and trained more than 70,000 people in leadership positions.
Dr Lee has made generous donations over the years to many worthwhile projects including providing training to more than 1.23 million farmers and more than 10,000 village doctors in mainland China, financing over 1,500 university presidents in central and western regions of China to advance their management skills through exchanges with top universities around the world, and expanding campus facilities and establishing scholarship programmes in a number of schools and universities in mainland China, Hong Kong and overseas.
Dr Lee has received numerous honours and accolades including honorary doctorates and fellowships from local and overseas universities, including City University of Hong Kong. In March 2008, he was bestowed various honours by the three top mainland universities, Fudan, Tsinghua and Peking, which is unprecedented. He has extensive experience in public service in mainland China and Hong Kong, and was made an Honorary Citizen by the Shunde Municipal
People's Government and the Beijing Municipal People’s Government. He was awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 2007 in recognition of his significant contributions to society.