Wan Li

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For the Ming Dynasty emperor, see Wanli Emperor.

Wan Li (Traditional Chinese: 萬里; Simplified Chinese: 万里) (born December, 1916) was the Chairman of the National People's Congress before his retirement in 1993, and was generally considered to be a moderate. He was born in Dongping, Shandong province of China.

Wan Li joined the Communist Party of China in 1935. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, he had taken many high rank positions. In 1979, Wan Li became governor of Anhui (the official title is First Secretary of the Anhui Provincial Party Committee). He was responsible for the institution of contract responsibility system in agriculture - one of the earliest initiatives of economic reform under Deng Xiaoping. The system began with the conspiracy of farmers in Anhui to divide communal lands and assign them to individual farmers. After their initiative was supported by Wan Li, and later in Sichuan province by Zhao Ziyang, it became national policy. The Anhui agricultural reforms were heralded as brilliant innovations by the central government. Wan Li was immortalised in the folk saying "If you want to eat rice, look for Wan Li." (要吃米, 找万里)

Wan Li became the Vice Premier in 1984 and the Chairman of the National People's Congress in 1988. Because Wan Li was sympathetic to the student movement the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he was temporarily put under house arrest but was soon able to resume his work, whereas the Party's General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, another supporter of the student movement, has been under house arrest until his death on January 17, 2005.

Wan Li retired in 1993. In 2004, he called for more democratic decision-making procedures in China to improve the country's "imperfect" Socialist system and boost economic development.

Along with 20 other retired Politburo members, they openly asked the Central Government to rehabilitate Zhao’s name and hold memorial services for him for his many important contributions to China.