Anson Chan Fang On-sang was born in Shanghai on 17 January 1940, one of twins, her family from Shou County in Anhui. Her grandfather Fang Zhenwu was a noted anti-Japanese general, her father Fang Shin-hau a textile manufacturer, her mother Fang Zhaoling a master of Chinese painting and her uncle Sir Harry Fang Sin-yang a well-known orthopaedic surgeon; the family moved to Hong Kong in 1948. She was educated at Sacred Heart Canossian School and St Paul's Convent School, worked briefly as a clerk at Queen Mary Hospital, entered the University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Arts in 1959 to study English and English literature, and graduated with an honours degree in 1962 before joining the colonial government as an administrative officer; she later also studied at Tufts University in the United States. Her posts included assistant Financial Secretary (1970), assistant New Territories Secretary (1972), deputy Secretary for Social Services (1976) and deputy Director of Social Welfare (1979). In 1984 she became Director of Social Welfare, the first woman to head a government department, and introduced several reforms to welfare services; in December that year she is recorded as representing the Hong Kong government in Beijing at the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. She was Secretary for Economic Services from 1987 and Secretary for the Civil Service from April 1993, before Governor Chris Patten appointed her Chief Secretary on 29 November 1993, making her the first Chinese and the first woman to hold the office; before and after the handover she oversaw arrangements for the civil-service transition and negotiations with the central government. She married Chan Tai-wing, a former Commissioner of the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Force, in 1963 and they had a son and a daughter. She was appointed an official Justice of the Peace in 1975 and was awarded the CBE in 1992. On 1 July 1997 she became the first Chief Secretary of the Hong Kong SAR, and her tenure was marked by persistent reports of friction with Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa. She took early retirement on personal grounds on 30 April 2001 after almost thirty-nine years in the civil service; she received the Grand Bauhinia Medal in 1999. In 2002 Queen Elizabeth II made her an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George, an honour usually reserved for governors before the handover; she also holds the French Legion of Honour and honorary degrees from Tufts, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Liverpool. She returned to public life in 2005. In December 2007 she won the Hong Kong Island LegCo by-election against Regina Ip with about 175,000 votes, becoming the first former Chief Secretary to sit in the legislature, until September 2008. In April 2013 she founded the civil-society group Hong Kong 2020 to comment on constitutional reform, with members including Allen Lee and Johannes Chan, and in 2020 she announced her retirement from politics.
As a long-serving senior civil servant, Anson Chan became the first Chinese Chief Secretary in 1993 and the SAR's first Chief Secretary after the handover, overseeing arrangements for the civil-service transition and helping the continuity of government across 1997. Known to the public for her ready smile, she moved after retirement into the legislature and civil society, continuing to speak on constitutional development. She also spoke about Hong Kong affairs on international platforms, making her one of the more controversial public figures of the post-handover era.
Achievements
- 1984 · Became Director of Social Welfare, the first woman to head a government department in Hong Kong.
- 1993 · Appointed Chief Secretary, the first Chinese and first woman to hold the post.
- 1997 · Became the Hong Kong SAR's first Chief Secretary after the 1997 handover.