Raymond Chan Chi-chuen
Raymond Chan Chi-chuen, also called Slow Beat in his radio career, is a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, presenter and former chief executive officer of Hong Kong Reporter.
Chan is the first openly gay legislator in Hong Kong and East Asia.Career
Chan graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1994 with a Bachelor of Social Science degree in Sociology.
In the early 1990s, under the stage name Slow Beat, he teamed up with Tam Tak-chi hosting a radio show on Commercial Radio Hong Kong known as Fast Slow Beats with help from Winnie Yu. The duo gained popularity when they hosted Challengers of Fire on Asia Television in 1997, but left the show one year later. They remained partners after joining Metro Showbiz in 2000 until Chan quit his career as radio host in 2007. He then spent one year practicing Buddhism in Japan. He returned as radio host at Internet radio station Hong Kong Reporter in 2010 and was named its chief executive officer in 2011.
Ray Chan is a Buddhist. In early 2009, he was a Buddhist monk in a Japanese temple, and he can read some fundamental Sanskrit.
In September 2010, along with several fellow hosts of Hong Kong Reporter, Chan became a co-founder and deputy spokesperson of political group Power Voters, whose objective was to oppose the Democratic Party in 2011 district council elections. Chan failed to challenge Democrat Lee Wing-tat in Lai Wah of Kwai Tsing District Council.
In 2012, he teamed up with Erica Yuen in running for the Legislative Council election and was ultimately elected. After the election, he came out as a gay man and voiced his support for LGBT rights in Hong Kong, including the legislation of the Sexual Orientation Discrimination Ordinance.
With the successful strategic voting among the pro-democracy voters, Chan was one of the five non-establishment candidates to be re-elected in the 2016 election with 45,993 votes. In the 2017 Chief Executive election, he supported radical legislator Leung Kwok-hung of the League of Social Democrats to run for the Chief Executive through an unofficial civil petition, despite the mainstream pro-democrats backed former Financial Secretary John Tsang.
On 4 June, in an attempt to disrupt the third reading of the National Anthem Bill at the Legislative Council, Chan and fellow lawmaker, Eddie Chu, attempted to disperse pungent liquid towards the President of the Legislative Council, Andrew Leung. They were stopped before they could have reached the rostrum; Chan dropped the liquid and a lantern on the floor. On 16 June, LegCo president Leung announced that Chan and Chu would be fined roughly HK$100,000 each for their actions. Chu declared the same day that he and Chan would examine and possibly challenge the decision.
