Background
As the Cultural Revolution gained momentum in 1966, it became clear evident that Chairman Mao Zedong and his Maoist followers in Beijing had underestimated the ability of local party organisations to resist the attacks from Red Guards. By the end of 1966 many local party groupings had survived by paying homage to Maoist teachings while countering the attacks of local Maoists.
To break the stalemate which had begun to form, Maoist leaders called for the "seizure of power by proletarian revolutionaries", a concept originally mentioned in the Sixteen Articles (a statement of the aims of the Cultural Revolution approved at the 11th Plenum of the Communist Party of China in August 1966). Shanghai was chosen as the first place where this "seizure" would be attempted.
Shanghai's experience of the Cultural Revolution had begun in the summer of 1966 with the formation of Red Guard groups proclaiming their loyalty to Chairman Mao. The movement quickly became heavily factionalised (as was the norm), but also rapidly developed very radical tendencies, with attacks on the authority of the city's mayor and physical attacks on government buildings. By the autumn of the same year, the spirit of rebellion had spread from the city's schools to the factories, and there soon followed the creation of many different worker-based groups. In November, several of these groups proceeded to form an alliance (the 'Headquarters of the Revolutionary Revolt of Shanghai Workers') led by Wang Hongwen.
By this point, the Cultural Revolution in Shanghai was proceeding at a very quick pace. On November 8, the Worker's Headquarters presented a list of demands to the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee demanding the replacement of the old "bureaucracy" with new organs that had popular support. These demands were refused, but two days later a large number of workers seized a train to Beijing, with the intention of presenting their demands personally to Mao. The train was intercepted at Anting (several miles from Shanghai). Nearly half of the workers remained on board, refusing to return to Shanghai, turning the situation into a three day siege.
The response from the Maoist leaders in Beijing was one of caution. Their first response was to send a telegram stating the seriousness of disobeying Party instructions, but before the order could be implemented a second message from the leadership was personally conveyed by Zhang Chunqiao (a leading member of the Cultural Revolution Group) to Anting, and he proceeded to grant the Worker's Headquarters legal status and cede to them all of their demands. The event signalled the exhaustion of the established apparatus' last political capital.
It was in this situation that the attempt to seize power would be conducted in early January 1967.
Read more about this topic: Shanghai People's Commune
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