In designing his economic policy programme for the next five years, President Hu Jintao is well advised to seek counsel from someone virtually unknown to those Chinese who came of age in the 1990s. He is Wan Li, 91 years old and still intellectually alert.

Mr Wan was a special guest at the opening session of the 17th Communist party congress in Beijing last week. It was he, more than anyone else there, who put China on the right track. In the 1980s he was a vice-premier in charge of agriculture, and before that he was the party secretary of the impoverished Anhui province.