Gang of Four - Definition and Overview

Politics and history

• In Chinese history, The Gang of Four (四人帮 pinyin sì rén bāng) was a group of Communist politicians based in Shanghai. They were among the main leaders of the Cultural Revolution. See Gang of Four (China).

• In East Asian history, The Gang of Four (or The Asian Tigers) refers to South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong as newly industrialized countries with shared economic characteristics.

• In British history, The Gang of Four were the four leading members of the Labour Party who left the party to found the rival Social Democratic Party in 1981. These were Shirley Williams, William Rodgers, Roy Jenkins and David Owen. The party was intended to "break the mould" of adversarial British politics. It eventually merged with the Liberal Party.

• In Australian politics, The Gang of Four was a term commonly used by the media to describe Democrat Senators Meg Lees, Andrew Murray, Aden Ridgeway and John Cherry, after they controversially toppled party leader Natasha Stott Despoja.

Entertainment and leisure

• Gang of Four is the name of a card game. The game requires wit, bluff and astute play which generates reversals of fortune that mirror the shifting politics of the Cultural Revolution period in Chinese history.

• Gang of Four is a British rock band. See Gang of Four (band).

• In comic books, The Gang of Four was a subset of the Oriental Heroes, a superhero group featured in a comic of the same name made in Hong Kong, and distributed by Jademan Comics. They consisted of Baldie (the leader of the group), Four-Eyed Ming, One-Eyed Draco, and Heartbreak Kid. All were practitioners of kung fu and chi kung.

Technology

• In software engineering, The Gang of Four (or GoF) are Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides, authors of the seminal book Design Patterns.

• In wide-area networking, Gang of Four is a type of Local Management Interface, or LMI, used with Frame Relay technology; the others are Annex A (CCITT) and Annex D (ANSI). The name comes from the companies who developed and adopted the standard for enhanced interoperability: Cisco Systems, Stratacom, DEC, and Nortel Networks.