Wang Hongwen (1935–1992)

Chinese communist politician, member of the ultra-leftist Gang of Four, who played a leading role in the destabilizing Cultural Revolution 1966–69, launched against so-called ‘bourgeois reactionaries’ and ‘capitalist roaders’ within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In October 1976, a month after the death of Mao Zedong, Wang was arrested and expelled from the CCP, along with the other members of the Gang, who had been plotting an armed uprising. The Gang members were tried in 1980–81 and found guilty. Wang, who was sentenced to life imprisonment and permanent deprivation of his political rights, died in prison in 1992.

Born in Changchun, in Jilin province in northeastern China, Wang moved to Shanghai where his early career was as a textile mill worker. He became politically active in the left-wing of the local CCP. There he became allied with Jiang Qing, Yao Wenyuan, and Zhang Chunqiao, the other members of the Gang of Four.

In January 1967, Wang and the other members of the Gang overthrew the moderate ‘Liuist’ Shanghai CCP committee and established a ‘People's Commune’, influenced by the model of the 1871 Paris Commune. Wang served as vice chair of this ‘Revolutionary Committee’ and in 1969 was brought into the CCP's influential national Central Committee. He became Shanghai municipality party leader in 1971 and two years later, at the age of 38, was inducted into the CCP Politburo's inner controlling Standing Committee and Mao Zedong made him vice chair of the CCP. This meteoric rise drew strong criticism from party traditionalists who, as believers in gerontocracy, mocked Wang as ‘a baby still smelling of milk’. However, Wang's ascendancy was brief.