Gang of Four

The Gang of Four (四人帮, Sìrén bāng) denotes the radical leftist clique of the Chinese Communist Party that wielded immense power during the latter years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Its four members were Jiang Qing (Mao Zedong's fourth wife and a former Shanghai actress), Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen. The group rose to prominence through the Shanghai municipal apparatus and the cultural-propaganda machinery; Yao Wenyuan's November 1965 essay attacking the historical play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office is conventionally treated as the opening salvo of the Cultural Revolution. Their authority derived less from formal office than from proximity to Mao and control over ideology, the media, and the security organs, though Wang Hongwen rose to Vice-Chairman of the Party and Zhang Chunqiao became a Politburo Standing Committee member by the Tenth Party Congress (1973).

The faction's programme rested on permanent class struggle, continuous revolution, and hostility to the rehabilitated cadres and pragmatist economic policies associated with Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. They orchestrated the 1973–74 "Criticise Lin Biao, Criticise Confucius" (批林批孔) campaign, partly aimed at Zhou, and engineered the second purge of Deng Xiaoping in early 1976 following the Tiananmen Incident of April 1976, which the radicals blamed on Deng and labelled counter-revolutionary. They commanded the urban militia of Shanghai and a network of propaganda outlets, but lacked a secure base in the People's Liberation Army—a fatal weakness. The label "Gang of Four" itself reportedly originated with Mao, who in 1974–75 warned Jiang Qing's group against "forming a gang of four" and behaving as a factional clique.

Mao's death on 9 September 1976 removed the faction's ultimate patron and protector. On 6 October 1976, acting Premier and Party Chairman Hua Guofeng, in alliance with Defence Minister Ye Jianying and security chief Wang Dongxing, ordered the arrest of all four members by Unit 8341 (the central guard regiment). This decisive move ended the Cultural Revolution as a political force and cleared the path for Deng Xiaoping's return and the subsequent reform and opening (改革开放) from 1978. The four were tried before a Special Court in 1980–81: Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao received death sentences suspended for two years (later commuted to life imprisonment), Wang Hongwen life imprisonment, and Yao Wenyuan twenty years. Jiang Qing reportedly took her own life in 1991. The official 1981 "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party" blamed the Gang of Four (and Lin Biao) for the catastrophe while preserving Mao's overall legacy.

For the examination, the Gang of Four appears in Modern Chinese History and General Studies papers covering the People's Republic and the Cultural Revolution. Typical question angles include identifying the four members, the significance of the October 1976 arrest as the terminus of the Cultural Revolution, the faction's role in purging Deng and attacking Zhou, and its place in the 1981 historical Resolution. Candidates should distinguish it sharply from the Lin Biao affair and connect its fall to the transition toward Deng-era reform.