Zhou Enlaiwas was a first People's Republic of China (PRC) premier and foreign minister, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) vice-chairman, member of CCP Politburo since 1927.
Background
Zhou Enlai was the firstborn of a prominent gentry family in Huaian, Jiangsu on March 5, 1898. Despite a turbulent childhood he was exposed to a cultured and supportive Confucian environment in Jiangsu until he was twelve. He then moved to Shanghai and to Manchuria where he was reared by uncles during the teen years and where exposure to harsher weather and social experiences (as a light-skinned southerner) broadened his outlook.
Education
He attended and achieved distinction at Nankai Middle School where he was befriended by influential school president Zhang Boling and where he was very active in student publications, organizations, and in dramatic productions in some of which he successfully played female roles. He spent two years in Japan and while he does not seem to have attended universities there as some biographers claim, he was, however, introduced to Marxism by Kawakami Hajime. Zhou returned to China at the time of the May Fourth incident in 1919 and enrolled in the initial class of the new Nankai University.
Career
In Tianjin he was jailed for six months in 1920, but later that year departed for France in a work-study program, where he again engaged heavily in political work among Chinese students.
While abroad, he resided mostly in Paris and Berlin, but traveled to England and Belgium, the overall experience contributing to his intellectual growth and cosmopolitanism although the full potential of such growth was limited by his deepening commitment to Marxism.
In 1924, Zhou returned to China, immediately taking up important posts in Guangzhou. He served as occasional aide to Soviet military adviser Galen (General Vassily Blucher), but most important, Zhou became head of the GMD's Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy Political Department. He distinguished himself in important political roles in the two military campaigns that secured Guangzhou from the latent threat of warlord Chen Jiongming.
Following the Zhong-shan incident of March 1926 Zhou was relieved of his GMD posts. In the internal CCP debate regarding an appropriate response to this initial, relatively mild GMD crackdown, Zhou upheld the Comintern line of continued cooperation with the GMD. When the revolutionary army occupied Wuhan in late 1926 he was made head of the CCP's new military department.
He was exceedingly fortunate to escape when on April 12 Jiang suddenly smashed the CCP in Shanghai. Zhou then became one of the organizers of the Nanchang Uprising on August 1, 1927. In the aftermath of this disastrous operation, he came down with malaria and went to Hong Kong for a time to recuperate. In mid-1928, he went to Moscow to attend the Sixth CCP Congress, following which he came to be second in influence only to the powerful Li Lisan.
Zhou was also elected a candidate member of the executive committee of the Comintern at its July-September 1928 Sixth Comintern Congress. He returned to China by late 1928, but in early 1930 went back to Moscow as the effective head of the CCP delegation to the Comintern. When the Chinese Red Army failed that summer in its attempt to take and hold Changsha, Zhou returned to China for the convening of the Third Plenum in September that would make Li Lisan the scapegoat.
Zhou waffled in his criticism of Li, yet was reelected to his positions at the next plenum in January 1931 after Li Lisan's removal from Zhou joined Mao Zedong and Zhu De in Ruijin, Jiangxi, where he was elected to important political and military positions in the Chinese Soviet Republic. He often opposed Mao during this period, particularly on military matters, and for a time succeeded in overriding Mao. But the tactics endorsed by Zhou eventually resulted in the loss of the Soviet Republic.
In January 1935, at Zunyi in Guizhou, Mao assumed effective command of the exodus from Jiangxi that would now come to be known as the Long March. Once again, however, the agile Zhou demonstrated that he could adjust to new leadership, tactically accepting a less-prominent position. Thus ensued the collaboration with Mao that would last some 40 years to the end of Zhou’s life.
Zhou won international attention when he successfully negotiated the release of Jiang Jieshi during the Xi'an incident of December 1936, and afterward the agreement for a Second CCP-GMD United Front. He continued to act as liaison to the Nationalist government during the War of Resistance against Japan. He was the principal representative of the CCP in the unsuccessful efforts of American General George C. Marshall to mediate between the CCP and the GMD in the early postwar period. He provided surrender terms to Nationalist Acting President Li Zongren in early 1949, which when rejected, led to the decisive Communist military victory on the Chinese mainland.
By mid-1949, Zhou turned his attention to participating in the formation of a new government for China, initially as vice-chairman under Mao of the reconstituted Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which body then formally established the People's Republic of China (PRC). Zhou became the premier (until his death) of the new government and its first minister of foreign affairs (until 1958). Zhou was in the international limelight again as a pallbearer at Joseph Stalin’s funeral in March 1953, and his visit to Moscow was instrumental in bringing about a three-year honeymoon period in Sino-Soviet relations. He played an important role in achieving the much-delayed 1953 armistice in Korea.
In May 1954 he again showed his impressive diplomatic skills at the Geneva Conference on Indochina. The following April 1955 saw his greatest triumph (prior to 1972) at the meeting of 29 nonaligned nations in Bandung, Indonesia.
Zhou's role in both the disastrous Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s and in the chaotic Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution beginning in 1966 was controversial inasmuch as he appeared to support Mao s radical policies, exhibiting considerable zeal in doing so. In the 1960s, in particular, Zhou decisively sided with Mao in the struggle against so-called revisionists and capitalist roaders, including the relatively pragmatic Liu Shaoqi.
The militarily sagacious Lin was no match for Zhou politically. Zhou’s official explanation of the Lin Biao incident, which he delivered at the Tenth Party Congress in 1973, was unsatisfactory, raising as many questions as it purported to answer. Nevertheless, Zhou was politically strengthened at this congress, having been elevated to the second position in the Party hierarchy. Subsequently, as he sought to rehabilitate cadres who had been targeted during the early Cultural Revolution and to restore regular government, Zhou also had to struggle with the radical Gang of Four, including Mao's wife, Jiang Qing. The radicals, frustrated by Zhou, attacked him indirectly in a widespread and intensive campaign to criticize Confucius that was eventually merged with a campaign to criticize Lin Biao. Already exhausted by the extraordinary burdens of the Cultural Revolution, Zhou soon weakened physically.
After being bedridden for many months, during which time he continued to work and was consulted, Zhou died of cancer on January 8, 1976 at the age of seventy-eight. Deng Xiaoping, whom Zhou had made his expected successor gave the funeral oration on January 15 in the Great Hall of the People. Mao rather conspicuously absented himself from this ceremony. Zhou’s ashes were scattered throughout China in accord with his request.
Political action consumed him, so he had little time to attend classes. Zhou continued to display a self-effacing willingness to let others take the leading positions in such organizations and activities, a trait that would remain a personal characteristic throughout his long career.
He formally joined the CCP in 1922, helping to establish that June the Chinese Youth Communist Party in Europe, as an overseas branch of the CCP. He was also very active in the Guomindang (GMD) in Europe during the initial period of collaboration between the two parties and was a special correspondent from Europe for the Catholic publication in Tianjin.
Zhou now went to Wuhan where the Communists continued to implement the Comintern line by working with the Left GMD. He attended the CCP's Fifth Congress in late April-early May 1927 at which time he became a member of the Central Committee (CC) and its Politburo. Shortly after this, the Left GMD also turned on the Communists. Chou was a prominent member of the Communist Party of China, and the first Foreign Minister of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1958.
Views
He devoted himself to with incredible energy and finesse for the next quarter century despite tremendous problems and frustrations. Even so, he used his negotiating skills to keep the government functioning during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and to protect many of his own, primarily, government cadres. It bears noting, however, that his ability or willingness to protect others did not include his own adopted daughter, Sun Weishi, who was tortured to death by Red Guards.
Membership
He was a member of the Juewushe (Awakening Society) from 1921.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Referring to Zhou, Deng stated that:
"He was open and aboveboard, paid attention to the interests of the whole, observed Party discipline, was strict in "dissecting" himself and good at uniting the mass of cadres, and upheld the unity and solidarity of the Party. He maintained broad and close ties with the masses and showed boundless warmheartedness towards all comrades and the people.... We should learn from his fine style – being modest and prudent, unassuming and approachable, setting an example by his conduct, and living in a plain and hard-working way. We should follow his example of adhering to the proletarian style and opposing the bourgeois style of life."
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, On China (2011): "Mao dominated any gathering; Zhou suffused it. Mao's passion strove to overwhelm opposition; Zhou's intellect would seek to persuade or outmaneuver it. Mao was sardonic; Zhou penetrating. Mao thought of himself as a philosopher; Zhou saw his role as an administrator or a negotiator. Mao was eager to accelerate history; Zhou was content to exploit its currents."
Connections
In 1925, Zhou married Deng Yingchao; the couple had met as fellow activists in the Awakening Society in Tianjin.