Zhou Enlai
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| “ | All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. | „ |
| ~ Zhou Enlai, quoted in Saturday Morning Post. |
Zhou Enlai (Chinese: 周恩来; Wade–Giles: Chou En-Lai ; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976), also known by his courtesy name of Zhou Xiangyu, was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China.
Background edit
Zhou Enlai was born in Huai'an, Jiangsu province on 5 March 1898, the first son of his branch of the Zhou family. Soon after birth, Zhou Enlai was adopted by his father's youngest brother, Zhou Yigan, who was ill with tuberculosis. Apparently 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 was also from a scholarly family and received a traditional literary education.
According to Zhou's own account, he was very close to his adoptive mother and acquired his lasting 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 novel Journey to the West at the age of six.
Zhou was China's head of government, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Mao Zedong and was instrumental in the Communist Party of China's rise to power, and later in consolidating its control, forming foreign policy, and developing the Chinese economy.
A skilled and able diplomat, Zhou served as the Chinese foreign minister from 1949 to 1958. Advocating peaceful coexistence with the West after the Korean War, he participated in the 1954 Geneva Conference and the 1955 Bandung Conference, and helped orchestrate Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. He helped devise policies regarding the bitter disputes with the United States, Taiwan, the Soviet Union (after 1960), India, and Vietnam.
Zhou survived the purges of other top officials during the Cultural Revolution. While Mao dedicated most of his later years to political struggle and ideological work, Zhou was the main driving force behind the affairs of state during much of the Cultural Revolution. His attempts at mitigating the Red Guards' damage and his efforts to protect others from their wrath made him immensely popular in the Cultural Revolution's later stages.
As Mao's health began to decline in 1971 and 1972 and following the death of disgraced Lin Biao, Zhou was elected to the vacant position of First Vice Chairman of the Communist Party by the 10th Central Committee in 1973 and thereby designated as Mao's successor (the third person after Liu Shaoqi and Lin), but still struggled against the Gang of Four internally over leadership of China. His last major public appearance was at the first meeting of the 4th National People's Congress on 13 January 1975, where he presented the government work report. He then fell out of the public eye for medical treatment and died one year later. The massive public outpouring of grief in Beijing turned to anger at the Gang of Four, leading to the 1976 Tiananmen Incident. Although Zhou was succeeded by Hua Guofeng as First Vice Chairman and designated successor, Zhou's ally Deng Xiaoping was able to outmaneuver the Gang of Four politically and took Hua's place as paramount leader by 1978.
By the end of his lifetime, Zhou was widely viewed as representing moderation and justice in Chinese popular culture. Since his death, Zhou Enlai has been regarded as a skilled negotiator, a master of policy implementation, a devoted revolutionary, and a pragmatic statesman with an unusual attentiveness to detail and nuance. He was also known for his tireless and dedicated work ethic, and his unusual charm and poise in public.
He was reputedly the last Mandarin bureaucrat in the Confucian tradition. Zhou's political behaviour should be viewed in light of his political philosophy as well as his personality. To a large extent, Zhou epitomized the paradox inherent in a Communist politician with traditional Chinese upbringing: at once conservative and radical, pragmatic and ideological, possessed of a belief in order and harmony as well as a faith, which he developed very gradually over time, in the progressive power of rebellion and revolution.
Though a firm believer in the Communist ideal on which the People's Republic was founded, Zhou is widely believed to have moderated the excesses of Mao's radical policies within the limits of his power. It has been assumed that he successfully protected several imperial and religious sites of cultural significance (such as the Potala Palace in Lhasa and Forbidden City in Beijing) from the Red Guards, and shielded many top-level leaders, including Deng Xiaoping, as well as many officials, academics and artists from purges. Deng Xiaoping was quoted as saying Zhou was "'sometimes forced to act against his conscience in order to minimize the damage" stemming from Mao's policies.
While many earlier Chinese leaders today have been subjected to criticism inside China, Zhou's image has remained positive among contemporary Chinese. Many Chinese continue to venerate Zhou as possibly the most humane leader of the 20th century, and the CCP today promotes Zhou as a dedicated and self-sacrificing leader who remains a symbol of the Communist Party. Even historians who list Mao's faults generally attribute the opposite qualities to Zhou: Zhou was cultured and educated where as Mao was crude and simple; Zhou was consistent where as Mao was unstable; Zhou was stoic where as Mao was paranoid. Following the death of Mao, Chinese press emphasized in particular his consultative, logical, realistic, and cool-headed leadership style.