Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect RevolutionaryZhou Enlai, the premier of the People's Republic of China from 1949 until his death in 1976, is the last Communist political leader to be revered by the Chinese people. He is considered "a modern saint" who offered protection to his people during the Cultural Revolution; an admirable figure in an otherwise traumatic and bloody era. Works about Zhou in China are heavily censored, and every hint of criticism is removed—so when Gao Wenqian first published this groundbreaking, provocative biography in Hong Kong, it was immediately banned in the People's Republic. Using classified documents spirited out of China, Gao Wenqian offers an objective human portrait of the real Zhou, a man who lived his life at the heart of Chinese politics for fifty years, who survived both the Long March and the Cultural Revolution not thanks to ideological or personal purity, but because he was artful, crafty, and politically supple. He may have had the looks of a matinee idol, and Nixon may have called him "the greatest statesman of our era," but Zhou's greatest gift was to survive, at almost any price, thanks to his acute understanding of where political power resided at any one time. |
Contents
The Kiss of Death | 1 |
The Making of a Revolutionary | 21 |
A Young Communist in Europe | 39 |
Building the Infrastructure of Revolution | 49 |
Birds of a Different Feather | 63 |
A Rising Star | 75 |
Trapping the Chinese Khrushchev | 89 |
Preparing to Take the Test | 105 |
Heir Preemptive | 183 |
Night Flight | 201 |
Whither Chinas Future? | 229 |
Long Knives | 237 |
From Duet to Duel | 249 |
SickBed Politics | 263 |
More Power in Death than Life | 305 |
Acknowledgments | 318 |
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Common terms and phrases
affairs attack August began Beijing campaign Central Committee Central Cultural Revolution Central Party Central Politburo Central Research Office Central South Lake Chairman Mao Chen Boda Chen Yi Chiang Kai-shek China Chinese Communist Party Comintern command Comrade Conference confront criticism Cultural Revolution Group decision Deng Xiaoping Deng Yingchao Enlarged Meeting Faxian February finally forces Guangzhou issued Jiang Qing Jiangxi Kang Sheng Kissinger launched leader leadership leftist letter Liberation Army Liheng Lin Biao Lin’s Liu Shaoqi Long Mao Zedong Mao’s Marshal medical team military nation Nationalist Nixon old cadres once Party Central Peng Zhen position premier Province purge rebels Red Army Red Guards revolutionary role self-criticism September Shanghai situation Soviet Speech Standing Committee struggle Tianjin tion took tural Revolution United Wang Hongwen wanted wife Wu Faxian Yao Wenyuan Ye Jianying Ye Qun Zhang Chunqiao Zhou Enlai Zhou’s