Wu Bangguo, former chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, died of illness at the age of 84 in Beijing at 4.36 am Tuesday (Oct 8), an official statement said.

Born in July 1941, Wu graduated in 1967 from the Department of Radio and Electronics of Tsinghua University, majoring in electronic vacuum devices. He was assigned to work at the Shanghai No 3 Electron Tube Factory as an operator, potter and furnaceman, toiling day and night with ordinary workers.

Until assuming his post as a standing committee member of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), his five-member, three-generation family had been living in an 11-square metre apartment room.

Since 1978, Wu Bangguo has served as deputy manager of the Shanghai Electronic Elements Company, deputy manager of the Shanghai Electron Tube Company, and deputy Party secretary of the Shanghai Instruments and Meters and Telecommunications Industrial Bureau.

In early 1983, Wu, turning 42, became a Standing Committee member of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and concurrently Party secretary of the Shanghai Science and Technology Work Committee. In 1985, he assumed the position of deputy secretary of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee, assisting the work of Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji.

From March 1991 to September 1994, Wu was secretary of CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee. He inherited the basic thoughts of Jiang and other former leaders of Shanghai.

In October 1992, having been a CPC member for 28 years, Wu was elected a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee at the First Plenary Session of the 14th CPC National Congress, and became a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPC and was transferred to work in the central leadership.

He was elected vice premier of the State Council in 1995 and served for two terms. During his eight-year tenure as vice-premier, Wu scrupulously stuck to his commitment of "serving the grassroots, doing practical and substantial things for the people, never seeking any personal gain, never being lazy, and never evading responsibility,'' and had always been dedicated to his work.

He entered the highest power elite in the country in 2002 as a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, ranking second and under then-general secretary Hu Jintao.

He also served as the chairman of the 10th and 11th NPC Standing Committee.

Wu has visited Hong Kong in 2000 and 2006.

Wu has stressed that China will not become a multi-party democracy or adopt other Western-style political reforms in his 2011 famous "Five Nos" speech – no multi-party system, no diversity of guiding ideologies, no separation of powers, no federal system, and no privatization in China – and warned that the country could face civil disorder if it abandoned its current system.

(Staff reporter, Xinhua and China Daily)

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China's former top legislator Wu Bangguo dies at 84