Take a bow, Anson Chan

ANSON CHAN Fang On-sang, Hong Kong's 'iron lady', has a proven record of bouncing back from criticism and controversy. So her sudden resignation yesterday might not end her political career but instead prove a fresh start.

Her toughness was first shown publicly, or best remembered, in 1986 during the Kwok Ah-nui incident. As the director of social welfare, Mrs Chan instructed officers to storm Kwok Ah-nui's home in order to remove the six-year-old girl from her mentally unstable mother. The mother was sent to a psychiatric hospital and Ah-nui to a children's reception centre. Mrs Chan weathered weeks of intense criticism and was depicted in the media as a heartless bureaucrat.

But she did not concede. 'It's an experience I will never forget,' Mrs Chan recalled years after the incident. 'Have I kept track of Kwok Ah-nui? Of course. She's doing fine at school and is very well-adjusted. More than ever, I realise we made the right decision. It gave Ah-nui the chance she might not have otherwise had.'

That was not the first time Mrs Chan displayed her strong character. She was born in Shanghai in 1940 and moved to Hong Kong in 1948. In 1959, she entered the University of Hong Kong to study English literature, and upon graduation in 1962, she joined the Government as an administrative officer - the first woman to do so.

She flourished in government service, moving quickly through the ranks in a variety of posts in finance, economics, commerce and industry, and social services. She lobbied for women's rights within the civil service. Female civil servants were then paid only 75 per cent of the salary paid to a man in an equivalent position and enjoyed no fringe benefits. In 1987, she was appointed secretary for economic services - the first woman to head a policy branch.

In early 1993, during the Container Terminal 9 dispute, Mrs Chan suffered a string of personal attacks from mainland officials after she repeatedly emphasised that the project did not involve any franchise or licence and so did not need to be discussed in meetings of the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group.