[4] While studying at Wuhan Middle School, he was active in the student movement[5] and became a member of the Socialist Youth League of China under the influence of Chen Tanqiu and Dong Biwu.

[6] After the surrender of Japan at the end the war, Wu was appointed Chief of Staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in the formerly Japanese-occupied Northeast China.

He became Chairman of the Shenyang Military Control Commission after the PLA seized the city in November 1948, and a member of the Northeast People's Government when it was founded in August 1949.

In March 1953, he visited Moscow again, as a member of the Chinese delegation led by Premier Zhou Enlai, to attend the funeral of Joseph Stalin.

[5] In 1958, he attended the Seventh Congress of Yugoslavian Communist Party, after which Sino-Yugoslavian relations almost broke because China harshly criticized Yugoslavia for its disobedience against Soviet Union.

On 8 April 1967, after he posted a big-character poster condemning the chaos created by the radicals at the International Liaison Department, Kang Sheng and Lin Biao arrested Wu as a foreign spy and imprisoned him for eight years.

[6] In April 1975, Marshal Ye Jianying worked to rehabilitate Wu and appointed him Deputy Chief of the PLA General Staff Department.

[5][6] After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Wu was appointed vice president of the special court for the trials of the Gang of Four and the Lin Biao clique.