Susana Chou: the businesswoman who became the first President of the Macao SAR Legislative Assembly

Susana Chou was the first President of the Legislative Assembly of the Macao SAR, holding the post across three consecutive terms from 1999 to 2009. Born into a Shanghai industrialist family and resident in Macao from 1968, she won a seat in Portuguese Macao's first direct Legislative Assembly election in 1976 and served across both the Portuguese and SAR eras. One of the city's best-known women in business and among its earliest localised legislators, she later served as a Standing Committee member of the CPPCC and deputy director of the Basic Law Committee, and received the Grand Lotus Medal of Honour in 2003.

From a Shanghai textile dynasty to a seat in Portuguese Macao's first direct election, and on to the first President's chair of the SAR Legislative Assembly — Susana Chou spent three decades writing herself into the opening chapter of Macao's legislature.

Susana Chou was the first President of the Legislative Assembly of the Macao SAR (1999–2009). One of the city's best-known businesswomen and a senior legislator spanning both the Portuguese and SAR eras, her public life runs almost in parallel with the transformation of Macao's legislature from a colonial assembly into a Basic Law-based SAR institution — from the territory's first direct election in 1976 to three consecutive terms as the SAR Legislative Assembly's first President.

Profile

• Chinese Name: 曹其真
• English Name: Susana Chou
• Portuguese Name: Susana Chou Vaz da Luz
• Ancestry: Ningbo, Zhejiang
• Born: December 1941 (Shanghai)
• Domains: Politics · Business
• Subject type: Official (first Legislative Assembly President)
• Languages: Chinese, Portuguese, English, French
• Assumed presidency: 1999 (re-elected through 2009)

Background

Susana Chou was born in Shanghai in December 1941, with ancestral roots in Ningbo, Zhejiang, into a family of industrialists — her father, Chao Kuang Piu, was a noted textile entrepreneur. She studied physics at Anhui University, then French language and literature at the University of Paris, and was fluent in Chinese, Portuguese, English and French — a rare profile in Macao's political and business circles of the time. In 1968 she settled in Macao and entered the textile and trading business, becoming one of the most influential operators in Macao's textile sector and chairing the boards of Macao Textiles Limited and the Macau World Trade Center, while also serving as France's honorary consul in Macao. Her bilingual, bicultural background made her one of the few bridging figures between the Chinese community and the Portuguese administration in the late colonial period.