January Storm and the Shanghai Power Seizure

Background: Worker Organizing and Two Clashes

On 6 November 1966, Wang Hongwen and other Shanghai factory workers founded the Shanghai Workers' Revolutionary Rebel General Headquarters (工总司), a citywide rebel workers' organization that the Shanghai Municipal Committee, led by First Secretary Chen Pixian, refused to recognize. On 10 November, more than a thousand of its members commandeered trains bound for Beijing to press their grievances directly on the central authorities, an episode known as the Anting Incident that held up 36 northbound trains at Shanghai Station and disrupted rail traffic for over 31 hours. On 30 December, more than ten thousand rebels, with the backing of Zhang Chunqiao, surrounded the Municipal Committee's offices on Kangping Road, an episode known as the Kangping Road Incident. Both confrontations sharpened the standoff between the rebel organizations and the existing municipal leadership.

The January Power Seizure

On 4 January 1967, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan arrived in Shanghai in their capacity as investigators for the Central Cultural Revolution Group, and rebel groups announced they had taken over the newspaper Wen Hui Bao; the following day, they announced the takeover of the Liberation Daily. On 6 January, the Workers' General Headquarters and allied rebel organizations convened a mass rally at People's Square titled "Thoroughly Overthrow the Shanghai Municipal Committee Headed by Chen Pixian and Cao Diqiu." Chen and Cao were subjected to a struggle session, and the rally declared that the Municipal Committee and municipal government would no longer be recognized as legitimate authorities, effectively paralyzing Shanghai's existing party and government structures.

Central Endorsement and Nationwide Spread

On 8 January, People's Daily published an editorial endorsing the rebels' takeover of the two newspapers, reflecting Mao Zedong's personal approval; Mao reportedly characterized the events as "one class overthrowing another, a great revolution." On 11 January, the Party Central Committee, the State Council, the Central Military Commission, and the Central Cultural Revolution Group jointly issued a congratulatory telegram to Shanghai's rebel organizations, praising the power seizure and calling on the whole country to learn from Shanghai's experience. The "January Storm" — as it came to be called after a People's Daily editorial — rapidly became the template for a nationwide wave of power seizures against party and government committees, a process that also produced escalating factional conflict and anarchism as rival rebel organizations competed for authority in the name of revolution.

The Shanghai Commune and the "Three-in-One Combination"

On 5 February 1967, a mass rally at People's Square proclaimed the establishment of the "Shanghai People's Commune" as the city's new organ of power. On 12 February, however, Mao Zedong told Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan that the name "commune" was unsuitable, since its nationwide adoption would raise questions about the continued existence of the People's Republic and its state structure; the Central Committee issued a notice on 19 February instructing localities not to use the "commune" name for new power organs. On 24 February, at a rally in Shanghai's Cultural Square, the "Shanghai People's Commune" was formally renamed the "Shanghai Municipal Revolutionary Committee," with Zhang Chunqiao as chairman and Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen among the vice chairmen, following the "three-in-one combination" model of rebel representatives, military representatives, and rehabilitated cadres.

Consequences and Reassessment

The Shanghai precedent was praised at the Ninth Party Congress in 1969 and held up nationally as revolutionary orthodoxy for years afterward, but it also opened the way to the broader "overthrow everything" phase of the Cultural Revolution, in which power seizures spread across the country, anarchist tendencies grew, and factional struggles between rival rebel organizations escalated into armed clashes in many localities. Chen Pixian and Cao Diqiu, the officials named in the January 6 rally, were held under investigation for years; Cao died in 1976 without having been cleared, while Chen was rehabilitated in 1975 and later held senior state positions. Chinese historians' assessments of the January Storm later shifted: in 1988, the historian Jin Chunming argued that the Shanghai "January Revolution" was not a genuine revolutionary upsurge but a movement manipulated by a small group for factional ends rather than a spontaneous mass movement.