Zhou Enlai

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Zhou Enlai (Chinese) is a Chinese statesman and military officer who served as the first premier of the People's Republic of China from 1 October 1949 to his death on January 8th, 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Mao Zedong and helped the Communist Party come to power, later helping the Communist Party resurrect its rule, formulate its foreign policy, and expand the Chinese economy.

Zhou served as the Chinese foreign minister from 1949 to 1958 as a diplomat. He was active in the 1954 Geneva Conference and the 1955 Bandung Conference, and he helped with the 1972 visit to China by Richard Nixon. He argued for peaceful coexistence with the West after the Korean War. He helped with the formulation of plans involving conflicts with the United States, Taiwan, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam (after 1960), India, Korea, and Vietnam.

During the Cultural Revolution, Zhou survived the purges of other top politicians. Although Mao devoted the majority of his later years to political controversy and ideological research, Zhou was one of the principal driving factors behind the country's postwar period. In the subsequent stages of the Cultural Revolution, his attempts to mitigate the Red Guards' loss and his attempts to shield others from their wrath made him extremely popular.

Mao's health began to decline in 1971, and Lin Biao came to disgrace and died in a plane crash later that year. Following these events, Zhou was elected to the open position of First Vice Chairman of the Communist Party by the tenth Central Committee in 1973 and subsequently named as Mao's successor (the third person to be so designated after Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao), but the Gang of Four has also rebelled internally against China's leadership. On January 13, 1975, his last major public appearance was at the first meeting of the 4th National People's Congress, where he presented the government work study. He then fell out of the public eye for medical care and died a year later. The ferocious public outpouring of grief that his death sparked in Beijing fueled fear of the Gang of Four, triggering the 1976 Tiananmen Incident. Despite that Zhou was able to outmaneuver the Gang of Four politically and named successor Hua Guofeng as First Vice Chairman and named successor, Zhou's ally Deng Xiaoping took over the Gang of Four's leadership by 1978.

Early life

Zhou Enlai was born in Huai'an, Jiangsu province, on March 5, 1898, the first son of his branch of the Zhou family. The Zhou family came from Shaoxing, Zhejiang province. Shaoxing was known as the home of families such as Zhou's, whose members served as government "clerks" generation after generation during the late Qing dynasty. (, shiye) The men in these families often had to be relocated, and Zhou Enlai's branch of the family moved to Huai'an in the late years of the Qing dynasty. However, the family continued to see Shaoxing as its ancestral home even after the move.

Zhou Panlong's grandfather and his granduncle, Zhou Jun'ang, were the first members of the family to move to Huai'an. Panlong appeared to have passed the provincial examinations, and Zhou Enlai later stated that Panlong served as the magistrate over Huai'an county. Zhou Yineng, Zhou's second son, was the second of Zhou Panlong's four sons. Surnamed Wan, Zhou's birth mother, was the daughter of a prominent Jiangsu official.

The economic fortunes of Zhou's vast family of scholar-officials were shattered by a severe economic recession that China suffered in the late nineteenth century, as well as many others. Zhou Yineng had a reputation for honesty, compassion, and fear for others, but others had been labeled "weak" and "lacking in discipline and determination." He was unhappy in his personal life and wandered around China doing various occupations, including Beijing, Shandong, Anhui, Shenyang, Inner Mongolia, and Sichuan. Zhou Enlai later remembered his father as being always away from home and generally not able to assist his family.

Zhou Enlai was adopted by his father's younger brother, Zhou Yigan, who was ill with tuberculosis shortly after birth. According to reports, the adoption was arranged because the family feared Yigan would die without an heir. Zhou Yigan died soon after the adoption, and Zhou Enlai was raised by Yigan's widow, whose surname was Chen. Madame Chen came from a scholarly family and received a traditional literary education. According to Zhou's own story, he was very close to his adoptive mother and inherited his enduring interest in Chinese literature and opera from her. Madame Chen taught Zhou to read and write at an early age, and Zhou later claimed to have read the famous vernacular book Journey to the West at the age of six. He was reading other classic Chinese books, including the Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Dream of the Red Chamber by the age of eight.

Wan was Zhou's birth mother and adoptive mother Chen in 1908 when Zhou was 10. Zhou's father was stationed in Hubei, far from Jiangsu, so Zhou and his two younger brothers returned to Huai'an and spent the next two years with his father's remaining younger brother Yikui. Yigeng, Zhou's older brother, had volunteered to care for Zhou in 1910. The family in Huai's consented, and Zhou was sent to remain in Manchuria, where Zhou Yigeng worked in a government office.

Zhou, a modern-style school in Shenyang, attended the Dongyang Model Academy. He had no formal education prior to being homeschooled. In addition to new fields such as English and science, Zhou was also exposed to the writings of reformers and activists such as Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei, Chen Tianhua, Zou Rong, and Zhang Binglin. Zhou said that his motivation for enrolling in education was to "become a great man who will shoulder the country's heavy burdens." In 1913, Zhou's uncle was moved to Tianjin, where Zhou entered the renowned Nankai Middle School.

Nankai Middle School was founded by Yan Xiu, a respected scholar and philanthropist, and is led by Zhang Boling, one of China's most influential Chinese educators of the twentieth century. Nankai's teaching methods were unusual by Chinese standards. By the time Zhou first arrived, the school had adopted the Phillips Academy in the United States' educational system. Many students were attracted by the school's reputation, which culminated in a "stricter" daily routine and "strict moral code." Zhou's family and classmates ranged from Ma Jun (an early communist leader who was executed in 1927) to K. C. Wu (later mayor of Shanghai and governor of Taiwan under the Nationalist Party). Yan Xiu and Zhang Boling's fascination with Zhou's talent attracted the attention of the latter. In particular, Yan was highly influenced by Zhou, who was assisting him with his finances in Japan and then France.

Yan was so impressed with Zhou that he encouraged Zhou to marry his daughter, but Zhou refused. Zhou later explained why he decided not to marry Yan's daughter to his classmate, Zhang Honghao. Zhou said he declined the marriage because he feared that his financial prospects would not be promising, and that, as his father-in-law, would later define his life.

Zhou excelled in Chinese, received numerous awards in the school speech club, and became editor of the school newspaper in his last year. At Nankai, Zhou was also very involved in writing and staging dramas and plays; many students who were not otherwise familiar with him were aware of him by his appearance. Nankai holds a number of essays and articles that were written by Zhou at this time, and they depict the discipline, education, and concern for the country that Nankai's founders attempted to instill in their students. Zhou was one of five graduating students and one of the two valedictors at the school's tenth commencement in June 1917, and one of the two valedictorians.

By the time he came from Nankai, Zhang Boling's gong (public spirit) and neng (ability) had left a lasting impression on him. His participation in debates and stage performances contributed to his eloquence and persuasive skills. Zhou left Nankai with a strong desire to work in government and with the skills necessary to do so.

Following many of his classmates' departures, Zhou returned to Japan in July 1917 for further studies. Zhou spent the bulk of his time in Japan's East Asian Higher Preparatory School, a Chinese language school. Zhou's studies were funded by his uncles, and it was likely that Nankai founder Yan Xiu was as well; but, Japan's funds were small during this period; inflation was high in Japan. Zhou intended to win one of the Chinese government's scholarships, but the Chinese students were still required to sit entrance exams in Japanese universities in order to qualify. Zhou took entrance examinations for at least two colleges, but was unable to gain admission. The death of his uncle, Zhou Yikui, his inability to control Japanese, as well as a widespread Japanese cultural mistrust against Chinese Muslims compounded Zhou's worries. By the time Zhou returned to China in 1919, he had been deeply disenchanted with Japanese history, rejecting the belief that the Japanese political model was relevant to China and disdaining the values of elitism and militarism that he observed.

Zhou's diaries and letters from his time in Tokyo reveal a keen interest in current events, particularly the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Bolsheviks' new policies. He started reading Chen Duxiu's New Youth, Chen Duxiu's left-leaning and progressive newspaper. He read early Japanese works on Marx, and it has been reported that he attended Kawakami Hajime's lectures at Kyoto University. Kawakami was a key figure in the early history of Japanese Marxism, and his translations and articles influenced a generation of Chinese communists. However, it now appears that Zhou never met him or heard any of his lectures. Zhou's diaries also expressed his concern in student demonstrations in reaction to the Sino-Japanese Joint Defence Agreement in May 1918, but he did not actively participate in them or return to China as part of the "Returning Home Movement." Since returning to China, his active involvement in political movements began.

In the spring of 1919, Zhou returned to Tianjin. Historians disagree on his place in the May Fourth Movement (May 1919 to June 1919). Zhou's "official" Chinese biography indicates that he was involved in the Tianjin student protests during the May Fourth Movement, but many modern scholars agree that it is highly unlikely that he participated in any way, based on the total absence of concrete evidence from the period. However, Zhou became editor of the Tianjin Student Union Bulletin in July 1919, possibly at the behest of his Nankai classmate, Ma Jun, the Union's founder. During its brief existence from 1919 to early 1920, the Bulletin was widely distributed by student organizations around the country and dismissed on at least one occasion by the national government as "harmful to public safety and social stability."

Zhou was in the first class when Nankai first began a university in August 1919, but he was an activist full time. His political interests continued to expand, and in September, he and a few other students decided to establish the "Awakening Society," a small group with fewer than 25 people. "Anything that is incompatible with change, such as militarism, partylore, bureaucrats, mismatches between men and women, mistrust, outdated beliefs, obsolete morals, or old ethics, should be banned or reformed," Zhou said, and that it was the Society's mission to spread this word among Chinese citizens. Deng Yingchao was the first woman Zhou encountered in this culture. In some ways, the Awakening Society resembled the clandestine Marxist research group at Peking University, led by Li Dazhao, with the group members using numbers rather than names for "secrecy." (Zhou was named "Number Five," a pseudonym that he used in later years.) Indeed, Li Dazhao was invited to give a Marxism lecture straight after the group was founded.

Over the next two months, Zhou took up a more prominent role in political affairs. The most notable of these events were rallies in favor of a nationwide boycott of Japanese products. The national government, under pressure from Japan, tried to minimize the protest as it became more popular. A riot in Tianjin over boycott activity prompted the detention of a number of people, including several Awakening Society representatives, and on Monday, Zhou led a protest calling for the release of prisoners. Three others were arrested, including Zhou and three others. The detentions were detained for more than six months; during their detention, Zhou allegedly facilitated Marxism discussions. Zhou and six others were sentenced to two months in July at their hearing, though the majority of people were not guilty. Since they had already been detained for more than six months, they were able to be released immediately.

Following Zhou's release, he and the Awakening Society met with several Beijing companies and decided to form a "Reform Federation"; during these meetings, he became more familiar with Li Dazhao and visited Chen Duxiu in Shanghai; during this period, he became more familiar with Li Dazhao; and finally, he and the Awakening Society became more familiar with Li Dazhao; during this period, he became more familiar with Chen Duxi Both men were forming underground Communist cells in collaboration with Grigori Voitinsky, a Comintern agent, but Zhou does not meet Voitinsky at this time.

Zhou decided to study in Europe soon after being released. (During his detention, he was suspended from Nankai University.) Although money was a problem, Yan Xiu gave him a scholarship. He successfully approached Yishi bao, literally, Current Events Newspaper, for work as a "special reporter" in Europe in order to obtain more funds. On November 7, 1920, Zhou and a group of 196 work study students, including colleagues from Nankai and Tianjin, left Shanghai for Europe.

Zhou's experiences after the May Fourth earthquake seem to have been pivotal to his Communist career. The Awakening Society of Zhou was also affected by the Awakening Society. At least 15 of the group's leaders became Communists for a brief period of time, and the party stayed close later. In the next two years, Zhou and six other group members travelled to Europe, and Deng Yingchao, the group's youngest member, was married Deng Yingchao.

On December 13, 1920, Zhou's crew arrived in Marseille. Unlike most Chinese students who went to Europe for work-study, Zhou's scholarship and employment with Yishi bao ensured that he was well-cared for and did not have to do any chore during his stay. Because of his financial situation, he was able to devote himself entirely to revolutionary causes. In a letter sent by Zhou to his cousin on January 30th, 1921, he said that his priorities in Europe were to investigate the cultural conditions in foreign countries and their ways of settling social problems in order to implement such lessons in China following his return. Zhou told his cousin that "I still have to make up my mind" after adopting a particular faith.

Zhou, who was also named as John Knight, investigated the various methods used by different European nations to solve class conflict. Zhou lived in London in 1921 and wrote a series of articles for the Yishi bao (generally sympathetic to the miners), investigating the clash between workers and employers and the conflict's resolution. After five weeks in London, he travelled to Paris, where the 1917 October Revolution in Russia was on full throttle. Zhou wrote to his cousin and suggested two broad paths of change for China: "gradual reform" (as in England) or "violent means" (as in Russia). "I do not have a preference for either the Russian or the British way," Zhou wrote. Rather than one of these two extremes, I would prefer something in-between rather than one of these two extremes."

Zhou, who was still interested in academic studies, went to Edinburgh University in January 1921 to visit Edinburgh University. He did not enroll due to financial constraints and language requirements, and did not return to France at the end of January. There are no hints that Zhou will enroll in a French academic program. He became a member of a Chinese Communist cell in spring 1921. Zhang Shenfu, who had met in August of the previous year in connection with Li Dazhao, recruited Zhou. Liu Qingyang, a member of the Awakening Society, knew Zhang through Zhang's wife, Liu Qingyang. Zhou has been portrayed as ambiguous in his politics at times, but his quick switch to Communism suggests otherwise.

Zhou's cell was based in Paris, and it did not include Zhou, Zhang, and Liu; instead, it contained two other students, Zhao Shiyan and Chen Gongpei. This group eventually formed a joint group of Chinese radicals from Hunan who were living in Montargis south of Paris over the course of several months. This group included such names as Cai Hesen, Li Lisan, Chen Yi, Nie Rongzhen, Deng Xiaoping, and even Guo Longzhen, another member of the Awakening Society. Unlike Zhou, the bulk of the students in this group were students in the work-study curriculum. Over a hundred students occupied the program's offices at the Sino-French Institute in Lyon in 1921, due to a string of challenges with the Chinese administrators of the program over low salaries and poor working conditions. The students, which included many from the Montargis group, were arrested and deported. When Zhou went from Paris to Berlin, he was evidently not one of the occupying students and stayed in France until February or March 1922. Zhou's transfer to Berlin was perhaps because Berlin's comparatively "liberate" political climate made it more suitable for overall European organizing. In addition, the Western European Secretariat of the Comintern was located in Berlin, and it is likely that Zhou had important Comintern links, but the exact nature of these is uncertain. After moving to Germany, Zhou frequently shuttled between Paris and Berlin.

By June 1922, Zhou was one of the 20 two Communist Party leaders present in Beijing and established as the Chinese Communist Party's European Branch. Zhou wrote the party's charter and was elected as the party's director of propaganda and served on the three-member executive committee. He also wrote for and assisted with the organization's newspaper, Shaonian (Youth), which was later renamed Chinoin (Red Light). Zhou first encountered Deng Xiaoping, a seventeen-year-old boy who Zhou recruited to run a mimeograph (copy) machine in Zhou's capacity as the general editor of this journal. The party underwent several reorganizations and name changes, but Zhou remained a key player of the organization throughout his tenure in Europe. Other important Zhou's duties included recruiting and transporting students for the University of the Toilers of Moscow in Moscow, as well as the establishment of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) European branch.

The Third Congress of the Chinese Communist Party accepted Comintern's call to collaborate with the KMT in June 1923, leading the Way. CCP members were encouraged to join the Nationalist Party as "individuals," though they were also keeping their CCP membership. They would lead and direct the KMT, making it a source of revolution after joining the KMT. This tactic would be the source of significant conflict between the KMT and the CCP within several years.

Zhou was instrumental in the formation of the Nationalist Party's European branch in November 1923, as well as being a member of the KMT. The majority of the European branch's officers were communists, according to Zhou's influence. Zhou's varied acquaintances and personal acquaintances during this time were vital to his professional career. Zhou admitted important party figures, such as Zhu De and Nie Rongzhen, to the party as early as Zhou.

The Soviet-Nationalist alliance was growing rapidly by 1924, and Zhou was summoned back to China for further study. He left Europe in late July 1924 and returned to China as one of Europe's most influential Chinese Communist Party leaders.

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