Wang Hongwen

Early Life and Rise during the Cultural Revolution

Wang Hongwen was born in December 1934 into a poor peasant family in Changchun county, Jilin province (in present-day Luyuan District, Changchun), and received only three months of private schooling before working as a swineherd for his aunt's family. He enlisted in the People's Liberation Army in 1950, served in the Korean War, and joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1951. After demobilisation in 1956 he joined Shanghai No. 17 Cotton Mill as a security official. On 9 November 1966 he and others founded the Shanghai Workers' Revolutionary Rebel General Headquarters (工总司), of which he became a standing committee member and later commander, publicly declaring that the organisation's aim was "to seize power." After the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee refused to recognise the group, Wang and others incited more than a thousand workers to commandeer trains bound for Beijing on 10 November to lodge grievances — the episode known as the Anting Incident, in which 36 northbound trains were held at Shanghai Station and rail traffic was disrupted for 31 hours and 34 minutes, rapidly establishing Wang as a central figure in Shanghai's Cultural Revolution.

The "January Storm" and the Shanghai Power Seizure

In January 1967, Wang Hongwen, together with Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, organised a mass rally to "overthrow the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee," subjecting municipal leaders including Chen Pixian and Cao Diqiu to struggle sessions and declaring that the committee and municipal government would no longer be recognised — the opening of the "January Storm" wave of power seizures. The seizure continued into late February, paralysing Shanghai's existing party and government structures, whose authority was ultimately taken over by a new power structure led by Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen, establishing Wang as one of the central figures in Shanghai's Cultural Revolution power structure.

Entry into Central Leadership

Wang entered the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee in 1969 and became Shanghai party secretary in 1971 before being transferred to Beijing in 1972. At the Party's Tenth Congress in 1973, he was elected to the Central Committee and appointed Vice-Chairman of the CCP Central Committee — nominally the third-ranking figure in the Party — despite a virtually non-existent political base. His extraordinary rise was widely interpreted as Mao Zedong's deliberate cultivation of a pliable successor.

Gang of Four and Arrest

Wang Hongwen formed a political alliance with Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan — the group later known as the Gang of Four. The youngest and least politically experienced of the four, his influence was concentrated primarily in workers' mobilisation. He was arrested alongside the other three members on 6 October 1976, tried in 1980–1981, and sentenced to life imprisonment. After being diagnosed with liver cancer, he was transferred from Qincheng Prison to hospital for treatment, and died in Beijing on 3 August 1992 at the age of fifty-seven.