Michael Rowse
| Mike Rowse 盧維思 |
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|---|---|
Rowse in 2010
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| Director General, InvestHK | |
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In office 1 July 2001 – December 2008 |
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| Commissioner for Tourism | |
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In office 1999–2000 |
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| Director, Financial Secretary's Office | |
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In office 1997–2000 |
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| Personal details | |
| Nationality | Chinese (Hong Kong) |
| Spouse(s) | First wife Fanny Wong |
| Website | rowse.com.hk |
Michael "Mike" John Treloar Rowse (Chinese: 盧維思) (21 December 1948) is a Hong Kong public figure. A naturalised citizen of the People's Republic of China, Rowse was the Director-General of InvestHK, a department of the Hong Kong Government.
Rowse is one of the few foreign-born civil servants in the post-handover Hong Kong Government. He is best known for having negotiated the Hong Kong Disneyland deal on behalf of the government in November 1999 in which the government became the park's largest shareholder; he thus received the nickname "Mickey Rowse", an allusion to the Disney character. Rowse then set up InvestHK, and was appointed its Director General on 1 July 2000. As head of the agency, he became involved in Harbour Fest, an event to promote Hong Kong in the aftermath of the SARS outbreak in 2003 which became the centre of a political scandal.
Rowse was born to a lower-class family in England. He and a friend developed plans to travel the world; his friend backed out. At the age of 23, and living in Isleworth at the time, Rowse set off over land in August 1971, and arrived in Hong Kong in 1972. He recounts in an interview with HK Online that upon his arrival, he lived in 36 square feet (3.3 m2) room in an apartment shared with three Indonesian Chinese families.
He worked as a reporter for The Star for 16 months, covering corruption and crime, and in 1974, joined the Hong Kong ICAC, where he worked in both the Operations and Corruption Prevention Departments. Taking the decision to stay permanently in Hong Kong, he settled down, married; in 1980, he joined the Hong Kong Government as an Administrative Officer. Rowse was made the first Director of the Financial Secretary’s Office, a post he occupied from 1997–2000 under then Financial Secretary, Donald Tsang. From 1999–2000, he was the first Commissioner for Tourism.
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