Liu Yan, a former Party official in Shenzhen who at 32 became the youngest female senior official in the city in 2001, admitted that her husband had adopted the nationality of a foreign country, the Beijing News reported on Wednesday.

Liu, 44, was the first female senior official among Shenzhen's post-1970s generation when she began working for the city's Dapeng new district in 2001. Earlier this month, she suddenly resigned, citing personal reasons.

The Beijing News reported that an unnamed source said Liu's husband is a senior manager of a well-known enterprise in China and a foreign national.

Liu told the Beijing News that her husband attained the status of a foreign national in the 1980s. They married in 1998, before Liu became a civil servant.

"I'm just an ordinary woman, wife and mother like others,"Liu said in a text message to the newspaper.