Wu Yi

Early Life

Wu Yi was born on 17 November 1938 in Hankou (now part of Wuhan), Hubei, her ancestral home being Huangmei County, Hubei. She initially studied in the national defence department of Northwestern Polytechnical University (then Northwestern Institute of Technology) before transferring to the oil refining engineering programme at the Beijing Petroleum Institute, graduating in August 1962; she joined the Chinese Communist Party that April.

Career in the Petroleum Industry

From 1962 to 1965 she worked as a technician and political-department clerk at the Lanzhou Oil Refinery in Gansu. From 1965 to 1967 she worked in the production department of the Ministry of Petroleum Industry in Beijing. From 1967 to 1983 she rose through a series of posts — technician, deputy chief engineer, and deputy factory director — at the Beijing Dongfanghong Refinery. From 1983 to 1988 she served as deputy general manager and deputy Party secretary of the Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Corporation, reportedly the only woman holding a bureau-level post in China's petrochemical sector at the time.

From Beijing Vice Mayor to Minister of Foreign Trade

From 1988 to 1991, Wu Yi served as a Vice Mayor of Beijing, overseeing industry and foreign trade. In 1991 she became Vice Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, and in March 1993 was promoted to Minister, a post she held across two successive government terms until 2003.

In the process of China's WTO accession, she represented China as minister in signing the China–US bilateral market access agreement with US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky in Beijing on 15 November 1999 — the decisive breakthrough in the accession negotiations. Wu Yi was known for her pragmatic style and firm negotiating stance, playing a central role in China–US trade negotiations for many years and earning the nickname "Iron Lady" (铁娘子) for her toughness at the table.

Politburo Membership and the SARS Response

In November 2002, Wu Yi was elected a member of the Politburo of the 16th CCP Central Committee, one of very few women ever to reach that level, serving until she stepped down after the 17th Party Congress in 2007. She became Vice Premier of the State Council in March 2003; that same month, as the SARS epidemic spread, Health Minister Zhang Wenkang was dismissed in April for concealing information about the outbreak, and Wu Yi took over as Minister of Health concurrently, holding the post until April 2005 and leading the response's shift toward transparency and disclosure — earning her Time magazine's description as a "Goddess of Transparency" and a place on its 2004 list of the world's 100 most influential people. She was also repeatedly ranked among Forbes' most powerful women in the world, placing second in 2004, 2005, and 2007, and third in 2006.

"Naked Retirement"

In December 2007, Wu Yi announced her "naked retirement" (裸退) — declining to take up any advisory or honorary posts after leaving office — and formally stepped down as Vice Premier in March 2008. She has made few public appearances since. She never married, later remarking in an interview that as a young woman she had read too many Soviet novels, such as A Land Far From Moscow, which left her with an overly romanticised view of love.