Zhou Enlai: A Life

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. (May)