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.

Early Career: Beijing's Ten Great Buildings and Cultural Revolution Persecution

Wan Li joined the Chinese Communist Party in May 1936, and after graduating from a normal school that summer returned to his hometown of Dongping to conduct underground Party work; in October 1937, on instructions from the Shandong Provincial Party Committee, he organised Dongping county's first county-level Party organisation, and subsequently helped establish the Taixi and Yunxi anti-Japanese base areas. From March 1958 he served as Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and First Deputy Mayor of Beijing, working under Mayor and Party Secretary Peng Zhen to assist Premier Zhou Enlai in overseeing the "Ten Great Buildings" constructed for the PRC's tenth anniversary, including the Great Hall of the People, completed in under a year — an achievement for which Mao Zedong reportedly praised him by punning on his name, saying "others travel a thousand li a day, but you travel ten thousand." When the Cultural Revolution erupted, he was severely persecuted as a close associate of Peng Zhen, subjected to years of struggle sessions and supervised investigation. In January 1975, amid Deng Xiaoping's comprehensive rectification campaign, he was appointed Minister of Railways and drove a vigorous overhaul of the railway system with notable success, but was purged again at the end of that year as the "Criticize Deng, Counter the Rightist Reversal of Verdicts" campaign gained momentum, cutting short a rectification effort that had lasted only nine months; he was not rehabilitated until after the fall of the Gang of Four in 1977, when he was transferred to become First Secretary of the Anhui Provincial Party Committee.

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.

The 1989 Political Crisis

On 12 May 1989, Wan Li, then Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, departed on a state visit to Canada and the United States. While in Toronto he delivered remarks praising the students' patriotism, drawing considerable attention. As the situation in Beijing continued to escalate, he cut short his trip and returned early, his plane landing in Shanghai — rather than Beijing — on 25 May, where he remained for several days. On 27 May, Wan Li issued a written statement in Shanghai declaring his support for the martial law declared by the central authorities. Accounts of exactly what transpired during his stay in Shanghai differ between official Chinese sources and the recollections of some overseas commentators, and the episode remains a subject of dispute. He continued to serve as Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee until the completion of his term in 1993, without further public involvement in political controversy.