China's own Thatcher has her eye on the top

CHAIRMAN MAO declared that women hold up half the sky, but it has been left to a feisty 59-year-old trade negotiator to stake a female claim to the top echelons of Chinese politics. Wu Yi, the highest-ranking woman official in China, is tipped for promotion during this year's annual parliament meeting, which opens on Thursday. If China breaks with its chauvinist past, she could even become the country's first female vice- premier.

Madame Wu, as she is always addressed by visiting foreign statesmen, is known to the Chinese as the woman who turned down the romantic solicitations of Yang Shangkun, then China's octogenarian president, in the late Eighties. "I am far too humble to accept such an exalted position," she is reported to have said when asked about her lack of interest in marriage to the revolutionary veteran. She persevered instead at the foreign trade ministry, presiding over China's Nineties export boom and soaring inward foreign investment.

Indeed, Ms Wu is just about the only female Chinese official to have reached a top-level political position without being married to a senior leader. Previous top party women have included the fanatical Madame Mao, and the spouse of Zhou Enlai, China's former prime minister. Ms Wu, however, was made an alternate Politburo member last autumn without any useful marital connections (it goes without saying that there are no women among the current 22-man permanent Politburo, and a mere eight women in the 193-seat Central Committee).

Interviewed after being appointed the head of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation in 1993, she said: "I'm willing to work hard because compared to other women I have more time and energy to work. I have no family. I'm single. I'm willing to learn. I also learn to love my work."

Ms Wu has carved out a reputation as a tough adversary, and one who has complete mastery of her brief. "She's China's answer to Mrs Thatcher - and I mean that as a compliment," said one Western diplomat. "The charm is undoubted, and the mental agility. She's a formidable opponent in negotiations and more than a match for most Western politicians," said another. She told members of the British Chamber of Commerce that they should be "less gentlemanly" in their approach to doing business in China.

Ms Wu's rise to power has been far from glamorous. Born in Hebei province in 1938, she graduated as a petroleum engineer in 1962. There is a bit of a mystery about exactly what she did for the following 20 years, a period which is left out of the official biographies; she is believed to have been in Lanzhou, in China's far north-west, but it is not generally known why.

In 1983 she became deputy head of Peking Yanshan Petrochemical Corp, a big state enterprise, a position which propelled her to the job of vice- mayor of Peking in 1988. She joined the foreign trade ministry as vice- Minister in 1991, taking over the top post two years later.

It is Ms Wu who has spearheaded China's long-running firm stance on joining the World Trade Organisation. Sir Leon Brittan, the European Union trade commissioner, has sat across the WTO negotiating table for many an hour without winning any big trade concessions from China. "She has certainly shown herself to be a worthy defender of China in international negotiations," he said diplomatically. "But more than a defender, because ... I think she's been ready to advance things as well as stop things."

Short in stature, she is robust in both form and argument. She is popular with Chinese because of her confidence and frankness, and compared with most senior Chinese leaders she is adept at dealing with the media. Photographs in official Chinese magazines show her on the tennis court (she captains the government female tennis team) and she appears occasionally in television galas showing off her strong singing voice.

If she is promoted at next month's National People's Congress to vice prime minister (China has six of them), she will probably retain a remit for trade and economic matters. Whether Ms Wu rises any further remains to be seen, but as the only female star in China's political firmament, she has already outshone most of her male peers.