Wuhan Incident (July 1967)

Background: Supporting the Left and Factional Conflict in Wuhan

In early 1967 the PLA was ordered to support the Left in the Cultural Revolution. In Wuhan the Million Heroes, backed by Wuhan Military Region commander Chen Zaidao, were locked in conflict with the rebel Workers’ General Headquarters and the Three Steels and Three News groups; the Centre’s letter of July 1967 said individual leaders of the Military Region had dissolved the Workers’ Headquarters and branded it “counter-revolutionary”. A 1968 CIA intelligence report put the Million Heroes’ membership at a reported 500,000 workers, students and cadres. Rebel materials cited by the historian Shen Xiaoyun say that armed clashes in Wuhan between 16 and 24 June alone left more than 350 dead, more than 1,500 seriously and more than 15,000 lightly injured.

According to Shen, Mao Zedong reached Wuhan on the evening of 14 July with Yang Chengwu, Zheng Weishan and Wang Dongxing, Zhou Enlai having arrived a day earlier; Mao’s instruction was to rehabilitate the Workers’ Headquarters and release Zhu Hongxia, while treating the Million Heroes as a mass organisation and having the Military Region “support both factions”. Wang Li of the Central Cultural Revolution Group and Vice-Premier and Public Security Minister Xie Fuzhi came from the southwest. The CIA report records that when they arrived on 14 July Zhou was already in Wuhan attempting to hammer out a settlement, and that the Centre opted for one side in the fracas. The 1978 report of the Hubei Party Committee and Wuhan Military Region Party Committee says that Xie and Wang “backed one faction and suppressed the other”, incited opposition to the army and aggravated the fighting.

20 July: The Seizure of Wang Li

In the early hours of 20 July members of the Million Heroes and soldiers of the Military Region’s Independent Division and 29th Division, in over a hundred trucks and dozens of fire engines, stormed the East Lake Guesthouse where Xie Fuzhi and Wang Li were staying and carried Wang Li off to the Military Region compound. The Wuhan Military Region notice of 26 July 1967 said Xie was pushed, struck and besieged and that Wang Li, a staff member and Beihang Red Flag students were kidnapped and beaten. The CIA report says Wang “was bounced around in the gymnasium for several hours and then detained under guard”; Shen writes that he was locked in a six-square-metre room and had his ankle broken when he refused to sign a statement recognising the Million Heroes as a revolutionary mass organisation. Large demonstrations against Wang Li followed in the streets.

According to Shen, Lin Biao’s side urged Mao to leave Wuhan on the grounds that his safety was threatened, and in the early hours of 21 July Zhou Enlai arranged for Mao to leave the guesthouse by the back gate and fly from Wangjiadun airfield to Shanghai. The CIA report says that when news reached Beijing the East China Sea Fleet was placed on alert, several vessels were sent up the Yangtze, and Zhou returned to Wuhan to secure the release of Xie and Wang, with air force personnel reportedly involved in the rescue. Chen Zaidao’s later account, by contrast, says the intruders did not touch Xie, did not go near the residences of Zhou or Mao, and that there was “not the slightest sign of any threat to the Chairman’s safety.”

The Counter-Revolutionary Riot Verdict and the Fall of Chen Zaidao

Xie and Wang returned to Beijing on 22 July to a welcome by tens of thousands at the airport. According to Shen, Lin Biao chaired a meeting that night that defined the incident as a “counter-revolutionary riot”; Chen Zaidao and 15 others flew to Beijing early on the 24th, and on the 25th a rally of a million soldiers and civilians in Tiananmen Square denounced him. On 26 July the reorganised Wuhan Military Region issued a notice calling the incident a betrayal, naming Wang Renzhong and Chen Zaidao as chief culprits, declaring a clean break with Chen and rehabilitating the Workers’ Headquarters. On 27 July the Central Committee, State Council, Central Military Commission and Central Cultural Revolution Group issued a letter to the people of Wuhan accusing individual Military Region leaders of using “barbarous fascist methods to besiege, kidnap and beat the central representatives” and ordering that the planners be investigated; the same day Chen and political commissar Zhong Hanhua were removed from their posts.

The CIA report records that on 22 July Jiang Qing declared that the revolutionary masses could use weapons in self-defence, after which the press launched a series of attacks on the PLA, culminating in the Red Flag editorial of 1 August calling for the overthrow of the handful in authority in the Party and the army. In the CIA’s judgement, the Wuhan events moved the Cultural Revolution “into its most leftist stage to date.” According to the 1978 report, after the incident Unit 8201 was branded a “rebel army” and the Million Heroes “Million Bandits” and a “counter-revolutionary organisation”, and many cadres and residents were searched, struggled against or imprisoned, and some beaten to death.

Rehabilitation in 1978

On 24 September 1978 the Hubei Party Committee, the Hubei Revolutionary Committee and the Wuhan Military Region Party Committee submitted a report on handling the incident, describing it as planned and provoked by Lin Biao and the “Gang of Four” in pursuit of power, and citing a telephone call of 18 July 1967 in which Ye Qun told Liu Feng: “if anything happens, go to Wang Li and do as Wang Li says.” The report described 20 July as a protest by indignant masses and soldiers against Wang Li’s activities, in which some “dragged Wang Li to the Military Region compound to argue with him”, and called for all slanders to be overturned and the persecuted rehabilitated. On 26 November the Central Committee forwarded the report, agreeing that the incident “should be rehabilitated and redressed” but directing that the decision and the course of events “should not be published in the press or broadcast”, and urging people to “look forward” and “not get entangled in old historical accounts.”

Competing Interpretations

The two official verdicts are diametrically opposed: the 1967 Central documents treated the incident as a grave political challenge to the Centre by individual Military Region leaders, while the 1978 rehabilitation placed responsibility on Lin Biao and the “Gang of Four”. The 1968 CIA report noted that after-the-fact Red Guard accounts contradicted each other on several points and that the circumstances remained obscure. The American scholar Thomas W. Robinson argued in 1971 that the incident “represents the apex of revolutionary violence in 1967 and a turning-point in the Cultural Revolution”, in which the regional military authorities sided with the conservative faction and threw down a direct challenge to Beijing—an episode that “had some of the markings of warlord politics.” Shen Xiaoyun argues that every existing version conceals key details for its author’s own reasons, that Chen Zaidao’s account still tries to present the incident as spontaneous, and that the incident marked the beginning of the rift between Mao and Lin Biao.