Wanli Emperor

The Wanli Emperor (4 September 1563 – 18 August 1620), personal name Zhu Yijun, was the 13th emperor of the Ming dynasty of China. "Wanli", the era name of his reign, literally means "ten thousand calendars". He was the third son of the Longqing Emperor. His reign of 48 years (1572-1620) was the longest among all the Ming dynasty emperors and it witnessed the steady decline of the dynasty.

Early reign (1572–1582)

Zhu Yijun ascended the throne at the age of nine and adopted the regnal name "Wanli", thus he is historically known as the Wanli Emperor. For the first ten years of his reign, he was aided by the Senior Grand Secretary (shǒufǔ), Zhang Juzheng, who governed the country as Yijun's regent. During this period, the Wanli Emperor deeply respected Zhang as a mentor and a valued minister. However, as the emperor's reign progressed, several factions within the government began to openly oppose Zhang's policies as well as to resent his powerful position in government, and tried to influence the Wanli Emperor to dismiss Zhang. By 1582, the Wanli Emperor was a young man of 19 and was tired of the strict routine of Confucian duties that Zhang still imposed on the emperor even though he was past childhood. The emperor became willing to dismiss Zhang, but Zhang died in 1582 before the emperor was able to act.

Wan Li

Wan Li (1 December 1916 – 15 July 2015) was a Chinese Communist revolutionary and politician. During a long administrative career in the People's Republic of China, he served successively as Vice Premier, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), and a member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Secretariat and its Politburo.

Wan joined the Communist Party of China in 1936 and led revolutionary and wartime resistance activities in his native Shandong province. After the founding of the communist state in 1949, Wan served in a series of government ministries, then worked as a member of the municipal leadership in Beijing. He was purged during the Cultural Revolution, but was eventually rehabilitated and returned to work as party chief of Anhui province, where he led the implementation of successful agrarian reforms centered on the household-responsibility system.

In the 1980s, Wan became one of the leading moderate reformers in China's top leadership, advocating for constitutional reforms, the strengthening of legislative institutions, and the abolition of 'lifelong-terms' of top political leaders. He was named head of the national legislature (i.e., the NPC) in 1988. He retired in 1993.