Rosanna Wong

She briefly retired from politics in 1991 but was successful to return as unofficial Executive Councillor for a second time in 1992, and was also appointed chairperson of the Hong Kong Housing Authority in the following year.

Wong was trusted by the last British colonial Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten (later Lord), who chose her to replace Baroness Dunn as the Convenor of the Executive Council (equivalent to the Senior Unofficial Member of the Executive Council) in 1995, thus rising as an influential figure in the final years of the colonial government.

However, her resignation did not prevent her and some other government officials from receiving censure in the short-piling scandal investigation report released by the Legislative Council later in January 2003.

Wong was born on 15 August 1952 in Hong Kong to a family descended from Anxi County of Fujian Province in China.

After entering secondary school, Wong's family resided on Lyttelton Road in Mid-levels on Hong Kong Island.

Wong had some classes with her mother, who also taught Regina Ip and Rita Fan, later Secretary for Security of the Hong Kong government and the President of the Legislative Council respectively.

Wong once recalled that her mother's knowledge and attitude to life had deeply inspired her thinking that since secondary three, she had become a volunteer and once joined a gospel rehabilitation group for drug addicts to pay visit to the Kowloon Walled City.

She was sent to Kowloon West at first and became a supervisor responsible for affairs of teenagers and counselling services in districts including Yau Ma Tei, Sham Shui Po and Tsuen Wan.

After obtaining a master's degree of social work from Toronto, Wong returned to the Federation of Youth Group and was immediately promoted as Executive Secretary (Operations).

In this capacity, she has successfully expanded the Federation to be a major teenage service organisation in Hong Kong with a total number of 800 employees.

[3] In 1982, she was awarded Commonwealth Scholarship, studying social policy and planning in the London School of Economics of the United Kingdom, and obtained her master degree in science in 1983.

Other unofficial legislators newly appointed in that year included barrister-at-law Maria Tam, physician Dr Henrietta Ip Man-Hing and so on.

To balance the power in the Council, to show friendliness to the mainland Chinese regime and to ensure that sovereignty of Hong Kong can be transferred smoothly and peacefully in 1997, many appointed or indirectly elected legislators, such as Allen Lee, Selina Chow and Rita Fan came together and formed a more conservative political group, the Co-operative Resources Centre (later renamed Liberal Party) with the support of then Governor Sir David Wilson immediately after the election.

[6] Under this background of wind of change, Wong was appointed back to the Executive Council as unofficial member by Patten in 1992, a year before graduating from the University of California.

In 1994, she became a member of the Court of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

[5][7][12] On the contrary, Baroness Dunn, the Senior Member of the Executive Council, was distanced by Governor Patten because she once supported the founding of the Co-operative Resources Centre, and thus her importance in the government faded gradually.

Wong then was selected to replace Dunn as the last Convenor (equivalent to the post of the Senior Unofficial Member) of the colonial Executive Council by Governor Patten.

Apart from being appointed non-executive director of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in November 1996, she was chosen as the chairwoman of the ICAC Complaints Committee in the transitional period between 1997 and 1998.

[16] Since Wong had close and intimate ties with the colonial government, there had been rumours before the transfer of sovereignty that she would not be allowed to serve in the new Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's Executive Council, or even the Housing Authority.

[6] Finally in 1997, although Tung chose veteran politician Sir Sze Yuen Chung as Convenor, Wong, along with Raymond Ch'ien Kuo Fung, was invited to stay as unofficial member in the new Executive Council.

In March and May of the same year, constructions in the shopping centre of Shek Yam Estate and in the site of Phase 3 of Tung Chung Area 30 were reported extensive non-compliance respectively.

[6] In June 2000, Secretary for Housing, Dominic S. W. Wong appointed Director of Intellectual Property, Stephen R. Selby as the chairman of the Investigation Panel on Staff Discipline in the Yuen Chau Kok and Tin Chung Court Incidents to see if anyone was derelict in the whole scandal.

He hoped the legislators to vote against the motion of no confidence, claiming that if "both of them leave one after another, an administrative and legal vacuum would be created at the top level of the Government".

[24] After resigning from the Housing Authority, Wong started to fade out from Hong Kong politics and retired from the Executive Council in 2002.

Yet, she responded that she would only receive 5,000 HKD annually as director's emoluments from the directorship and she promised to bring the voice of the social work sector into the corporation.

There was little controversy within the pro-Beijing camp of Hong Kong over the appointment since it was the first time for Wong to be admitted to a mainland Chinese official organisation.