Yao Lifa

Who is Yao Lifa?

Yao Lifa, born in 1958, in Qianjiang City in the central province of Hubei, China, is apparently the first person in China elected through self-nomination to a municipal-level people’s congress.

Yao, who has a vocational school education and works at an elementary school, began competing for a seat in the local people’s congress in 1987, when the election law was first promulgated. The law allows for self-nominated candidates, and Yao used this provision to run for office.

Twelve years later, in 1998, he was finally successful. Over the course of the next five years, Yao was a busy and controversial figure—he raised 187 of the 459 suggestions, opinions, and criticisms presented to the local people’s congress. Yao also undertook a survey of the 329 villages under Qianjiang City and found that 187 village chairmen and 432 vice chairmen and village committee members in 269 villages who had been elected in 1999—some 57 percent of the total—had been dismissed over the course of the following three years. Sensing a mandate, he railed against the detention of peasants who refused to pay illegal fees, collected more than 10,000 signatures criticizing a Party official, and denounced the wasting of public money on marble street curbs, tiled