During the Long March, before the Zunyi meeting, Mao Zedong, Zhang Wentian and Wang Jiaxiang spent their days together. Wang had been badly wounded and was carried on a stretcher. In 2016, Xinhua asked in a headline what the “conspiracy” on the stretchers had been. Its answer: “Days and nights together on stretchers and by the campfire gave Mao Zedong, Zhang Wentian and Wang Jiaxiang a good chance to exchange views.”
From January 15 to 17, 1935, the enlarged Politburo meeting at Zunyi made four decisions. One of them elected Mao to the Standing Committee of the Politburo.