if its not bad form to quote wikipedia, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_

if its not bad form to quote wikipedia, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China where it mentions the fall of the Gang of Four. I think what happened was that China was pretty unstable what with the Wars and then the Communist takeover in 1950, and the Great Leap Forward (exercise in Irony) crippled the country until the economic reforms around the same time as 1984.