Prior to this, certain younger members of the Maoist left especially those who had strong organizational ties with armed workers’ militia had called for an uprising in Shanghai to preempt what they’d anticipated would be plans by the rightist capitalist roaders to pull off a military coup but older members such as Jiang and Zhang didn’t think the rightists would dare to do it so close to Mao’s death and was counting on a central committee plenum to stir up mass struggle over the political line of the party.

The capitalist roaders in the party center especially in the party CMC never gave the Maoist left the benefit of what would be considered normal party procedures to settle the question of political line in a party plenum; they seize political power with the barrel of the gun. Had younger members of the Maoist left then prevailed, the capitalist roaders would have been not be able to decapitate the Maoist left so quickly that they could lay the basic political and ideological foundation of their revisionist line to restore capitalism in the party during the 11th party plenum in late 1978 only two years after Mao’s death.

The capitalist-roader rightists were one step ahead of the Maoist leftists in using the barrel of the gun in settling the question of political line in the Chinese Communist Party soon after Mao died.