Zhou Enlai
A Life
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
A Financial Times Best Book of the Year
The definitive biography of Zhou Enlai, the first premier and preeminent diplomat of the People’s Republic of China, who protected his country against the excesses of his boss—Chairman Mao.
Zhou Enlai spent twenty-seven years as premier of the People’s Republic of China and ten as its foreign minister. He was the architect of the country’s administrative apparatus and its relationship to the world, as well as its legendary spymaster. Richard Nixon proclaimed him “the greatest statesman of our era.” Yet Zhou has always been overshadowed by Chairman Mao. Chen Jian brings Zhou into the light, offering a nuanced portrait of his complex life as a revolutionary, a master diplomat, and a man with his own vision and aspirations who did much to make China, as well as the larger world, what it is today.
Born to a declining mandarin family in 1898, Zhou received a classical education and as a teenager spent time in Japan. As a young man, driven by the desire for China’s development, Zhou embraced the communist revolution as a vehicle of China’s salvation. He helped Mao govern through a series of transformations, including the disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Yet, as Chen shows, Zhou was never a committed Maoist. His extraordinary political and bureaucratic skill, combined with his centrist approaches, enabled him to mitigate the enormous damage caused by Mao’s radicalism.
When Zhou died in 1976, the PRC that we know of was not yet visible on the horizon; he never saw glistening twenty-first-century Shanghai or the broader emergence of Chinese capitalism. But it was Zhou’s work that shaped the nation whose influence and power are today felt in every corner of the globe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Long-serving Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) played the conscience to Mao Zedong's capricious lord of misrule, according to this sober biography. Historian Chen (Mao's China and the Cold War) recaps Zhou's career, from his role as the Chinese Communist Party's chief spymaster and diplomat during its civil war with Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist government to his activities as premier and foreign minister following the 1949 Communist victory, when he orchestrated such geopolitical breakthroughs as President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to Beijing. The book's fascinating core is Zhou's relationship with Party Chairman Mao, who began as Zhou's subordinate before accruing total power—a development Zhou, unlike many purged Party officials, survived through canny maneuvering. Chen styles Zhou as a brilliant organizer and a humane statesman whose "personalized administrative capacity... trapped Mao's seemingly unlimited power" and moderated his excesses. For instance, Zhou issued prescient warnings about Mao's Great Leap Forward policy, which led to economic collapse and famine, and helped stabilize the country after Mao's government purges during the Cultural Revolution. In the lucid, well-researched narrative, Zhou often comes off as a servile figure—he coldly joined in denouncing comrades persecuted by Mao, including his own daughter—which somewhat clouds Chen's vision of the premier as a master architect working behind the scenes to lay the groundwork for modern China's prosperity. Still, it's a satisfyingly fine-grained account of an influential figure often lost in Mao's shadow. Photos.
