Wan Li, the last of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s revolutionary veteran cadres known as the “Eight Immortals,” died on July 15, 2015, at the age of 98. Wan Li, who joined the Party in 1936 and rose to become Chairman of the National People’s Congress (NPC), was a close associate of Deng Xiaoping's and had a hand in some of China's earliest economic reforms after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.  A state-backed news portal quoted Wan Li's son, Wan Boao as saying that Wan Li died of an illness in Beijing.