Zhou Enlai (Chou
En-lai), the son of wealthy parents, was born in Jiangsu, China,
in 1898. He was educated in a missionary college in Tianjin before
studying at a university in Japan.
He moved to France
in 1920 where he helped to form the overseas branch of the Chinese
Communist Party. He also lived in Britain
and Germany
before returning
to China in 1924.
As members of
the Communist Party Mao
Zedong, Zhu
De and Zhou Enlai
adapted
the ideas of Lenin who had successfully
achieved a revolution in Russia in 1917.
They argued that in Asia it was important to concentrate on the countryside
rather than the towns, in order to create a revolutionary elite.
Zhou Enlai
also worked closely with the Kuomintang
and was appointed deputy director of the political department of the
Whampoa Military Academy. With
the help of advisers from the Soviet Union
the Kuomintang gradually increased its power in China. Its leader,
Sun Yat-sen died on 12th March 1925. Chiang
Kai-Shek emerged
as the most important figure in the organization. He now carried out
a purge that eliminated the communists from the organization. Those
communists who survived managed to established the Jiangxi Soviet.
The nationalists now imposed
a blockade and Mao
Zedong decided
to evacuate the area and establish a new stronghold in the north-west
of China. In October 1934 Mao, Zhou
Enlai, Lin
Biao, Zhu
De, and some
100,000 men and their dependents headed west through mountainous areas.
The marchers experienced
terrible hardships. The most notable passages included the crossing
of the suspension bridge over a deep gorge at Luting (May, 1935),
travelling over the Tahsueh Shan mountains (August, 1935) and the
swampland of Sikang (September, 1935).
The marchers covered about
fifty miles a day and reached Shensi on 20th October 1935. It is estimated
that only around 30,000 survived the 8,000-mile Long
March.
When the Japanese
Army invaded the heartland of China in 1937, Chiang
Kai-Shek was
forced to move his capital from Nanking to Chungking. He lost control
of the coastal regions and most of the major cities to Japan. In an
effort to beat the Japanese he agreed to collaborate with Mao
Zedong and
his communist army.
During the Second
World War the communist guerrilla forces were well led by
Zhu De and Lin Biao.
As soon as the Japanese
surrendered, Communist forces began a war against the Nationalists
led by Chaing
Kai-Shek. The
communists gradually gained control of the country and on 1st October,
1949, Mao
Zedong announced
the establishment of People's Republic of China.
Zhou Enlai
became prime minister and foreign minister. In 1954 he headed the
Chinese delegation to the Geneva Conference. The following year he
advocated Third World unity at the Bandung Conference.
As a result of
the failure on the Great
Leap Forward,
Mao retired from the post of chairman of the People's Republic of
China. His place as head of state was taken by Liu
Shaoqi. Mao remained important in determining overall policy.
In the early 1960s Mao became highly critical of the foreign policy
of the Soviet Union. He
was for example appalled by the way Nikita
Khrushchev backed
down over the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
Mao
Zedong
became openly involved in politics in 1966 when with Lin
Biao he
initiated the Cultural Revolution.
On 3rd September, 1966, Lin Biao made a speech where he urged pupils
in schools and colleges to criticize those party officials who had
been influenced by the ideas of Nikita
Khrushchev.
Mao was concerned
by those party leaders such as Liu Shaoqi,
who favoured the introduction of piecework,
greater wage differentials and measures that sought to undermine collective
farms and factories. In
an attempt to dislodge those in power who favoured the Soviet model
of communism, Mao galvanized students and young workers as his Red
Guards to attack revisionists in the party. Mao told them the
revolution was in danger and that they must do all they could to stop
the emergence of a privileged class in China. He argued this is what
had happened in the Soviet Union under Joseph
Stalin and Nikita
Khrushchev.
Zhou
Enlai at
first gave his support to the campaign but became concerned when fighting
broke out between the Red Guards
and the revisionists. In order to achieve peace at the end of 1966
he called for an end to these attacks on party officials. Mao remained
in control of the Cultural Revolution
and with the support of the army was able to oust the revisionists.
Although he continued
to be attacked by the Red Guards
Zhou Enlai survived in power and was the main architect of the Détente
policy with the
United States and met Richard
Nixon
in China
in February 1972. Zhou Enlai
died in
Beijing on
8th January 1976.
(1)
Zhou
Enlai, Mao Zedong (1978)
During the Great Revolution,
Chairman Mao was already aware that the peasants were the largest
ally and that the people's revolution could not triumph without them.
And sure enough, the revolution suffered defeat because his views
weren't listened to. Later, when we got to the countryside. Chairman
Mao saw that in order to carry out the revolution it is necessary
not only to rely on the peasants, but also to win over the middle
and petty bourgeoisie. As Chiang Kai-shek's counter-revolutionary
treachery became further exposed, only the comprador-bureaucrat and
feudal landlord classes supported him. But a group of people inside
the Communist Party made "Left" deviationist mistakes and
were very narrow in their outlook, holding that the middle and petty
bourgeoisie were unreliable. They didn't listen to Chairman Mao, and
the result was that the revolution suffered another setback and we
had to march 25,000 li. Then Chairman Mao proposed that we
unite with Chiang Kai-shek and other members of the upper strata to
resist Japanese aggression. But some people said that if we wanted
unity, there shouldn't be any struggle. Chairman Mao replied that
Chiang and the others were our domestic enemy; we were uniting with
them in order to fight the national enemy. But they were not reliable
partners or allies, and we must guard against them; otherwise, they
might turn on us. We took measures to avert Right deviations and to
prevent unqualified compromises. During the present War of Liberation,
"Left" deviationist mistakes were made in agrarian reform
in the countryside. In order to eliminate the landlord class, landlords
were given poor land or
no land at all so that they could not eke out a living; or too many
people were classified as feudal rich peasants or landlords. Moreover,
on the question of executions,
it was stipulated that no one should be executed except for those
who had committed serious crimes, refused to mend their ways' and
were bitterly hated by the people. But, sometimes,
when the people were filled with wrath, these distinctions were
not made, and the leadership did not attempt to persuade the masses,
so too many people were put to death. This had an adverse effect on
our united front with the peasantry, and particularly with the middle
peasants. This mistake
was also corrected by Chairman Mao.
(2)
Zhou
Enlai, Mao Zedong (1978)
Reactionaries, including
Chiang Kai-shek, often claim that they are for freedom of thought.
As everybody knows, that
is nonsense, for what freedom is there under Chiang Kai-shek's rule?
The people are suffering oppression and exploitation. Only the small
handful of reactionary landlords and bureaucrat-capitalists are free
- free to exploit, oppress and slaughter the people. In the bourgeois-democratic
countries, only the bourgeoisie have freedom of thought, which is
denied to the workers and peasants. In our new-democratic country,
the people will enjoy full freedom of thought. Aside from reactionary
ideology, all other kinds will be allowed to exist. Not only progressive,
socialist or communist but also religious ideas may exist. The propagation
of reactionary ideas is not allowed, but apart from that, there is
freedom of speech, the press, assembly and association. The Communist
Party holds that historical materialism is correct and that Mao Zedong
Thought is correct. These ideas, of course, should be propagated.
But it does not mean that other ideologies are not allowed to exist.
We educate people in our ideology, but they are free to choose whether
to listen or not, whether to accept or not. This is the only approach
that is truly educational and appropriate to leadership - an approach
of working together with other people, a co-operative approach.
(3)
Jack
Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker
(1979)
In his mid-forties, Chou
En-lai had a handsome face, which lingers in my memory for its black
eyes and incandescent intelligence. He was slight of build but indefatigable;
he affected simplicity but was an elegant man, graceful of movement,
accomplished in English and French as well as Chinese dialects, buttressing
his arguments with historical and literary allusions that evinced
a formidable education. And one caught Hashes of a ruthless rationalism
that would sacrifice the lives of millions to the triumph of an idea.
Walter Robertson, the State Department's Far Eastern expert, described
the Chou En-lai of those years as "one of the most charming,
intelligent and attractive men of any race" he had ever known.
"But he'll cut your throat."
Even his formulations
of official propaganda were artfully plausible, but it was his side
excursions that kept me coming back to trespass upon his time. He
would expound on the true sources of power behind the fagades of constitutions
and ballot boxes; on the requirements for a just society in that half
of the world where a man counted for no more than an ox, and a woman
less; on the ingredients of peace in a world whose balance was fundamentally
altered by the reemergence of Asia; on the tragedy for America as
well as for China if we continued to ally ourselves to a Kuomintang
which could not win but which could indefinitely prolong China's agony
and the world's instability.
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