Wang Hongwen

WANG HONGWEN was the youngest member of the Gang of Four. He was born in 1933 or 1935 and took part in the Korean War in the early 1950s. After the war he was sent to Shanghai to work in a factory. There he met Zhang Chunqiao and became involved in a Red Guards group. He organized the Shanghai Commune in January 1967. In 1969 he was elected to the Central Committee. In 1973 he joined the Permanent Committee and become deputy-president of the Party.

He was arrested in October 1976 and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. He died of liver cancer in a Beijing hospital in 1992.