Wan Li

Wan Li (December 1916 – 15 July 2015) was born in Dongping County, Shandong Province. He served as a member of the Politburo of the CCP's Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Central Committees, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Thirteenth Central Committee, and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Seventh National People's Congress.

Wan Li played a pivotal role in China's rural reform. Appointed First Secretary of the Anhui Provincial Party Committee in 1977, he inherited a province severely damaged by the Cultural Revolution and the failures of collective farming. Confronted with widespread rural poverty and food insecurity, he adopted a pragmatic stance, permitting and protecting spontaneous experiments with household contracting (bao chan dao hu) across Anhui. The November 1978 contract secretly signed in red fingerprints by eighteen farmers in Xiaogang Village, Fengyang County — subsequently celebrated as the founding moment of the 'big contract' system — occurred within the political space that Wan Li's leadership provided.

Known for prioritising practical results, his approach in Anhui complemented Zhao Ziyang's parallel agricultural experiments in Sichuan, together furnishing the Party Central Committee with critical provincial evidence that underpinned the subsequent formal endorsement of the Household Responsibility System through the 'No. 1 Documents' series. The popular saying "要吃粮，找紫阳；要吃米，找万里" ('for grain, find Zhao Ziyang; for rice, find Wan Li') captured the historical standing of both men in the agricultural transition of the early reform era. In 1980 Wan Li was transferred to the State Council as Vice Premier with responsibility for agriculture, continuing to drive rural reform nationally. He served as Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 1988 to 1993.