How many languages did zhou enlai speak
Zhou Enlai
Premier of China from to
In this Chinese name, the family name is Zhou.
Zhou Enlai (Chinese: 周恩来; pinyin: Zhōu Ēnlái; Wade–Giles: Chou1 Ên1-lai2; 5 March &#;&#; 8 January ) was a Chinese statesman, diplomat, and revolutionary who served as the inaugural premier of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from until his death in , and concurrently as the inaugural Minister of Foreign Affairs from to Zhou was a key figure in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and ally of Mao Zedong during the Chinese Civil War, later helping consolidate its control, form its foreign policy, and develop the economy.
Born in Jiangsu, as a student Zhou was involved in the May Fourth Movement, and in the early s studied in France, where he joined the newly-founded CCP. During the party's alliance with the Kuomintang (KMT), he worked in the political department of the Whampoa Military Academy. In , Zhou led the worker uprising which was crushed by the KMT in the Shanghai massacre, after which he helped lead the Nanchang uprising.
Zhou worked underground in Shanghai before being transferred to the Jiangxi Soviet, and after the soviet's defeat was a member of the party's top leadership during its Long March. Zhou came to support Mao Zedong, who became leader of the CCP in During the Xi'an Incident in , Zhou successfully persuaded KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek to agree to form a Second United Front against the Japanese.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Zhou was the resident representative of the CCP in Chongqing, and during the renewed civil war from assisted Mao in commanding military campaigns.
After the establishment of the PRC in , Zhou was appointed head of government and foreign minister. Advocating peaceful coexistence with the West after the Korean War, he participated in the Geneva Conference and Bandung Conference and helped orchestrate Richard Nixon's visit to China.
He helped devise policies regarding disputes with the United States, Taiwan, the Soviet Union (after ), India, Korea, and Vietnam. Zhou survived the purges of other top officials during the Cultural Revolution from to , and was one of the main driving forces behind affairs of state as Mao dedicated much of his later years to political struggle and ideological work.
Zhou's attempts at mitigating the Red Guards' damage and his efforts to protect others from their wrath made him immensely popular in its later stages.
Mao's health began to decline in , and Lin Biao fell into disgrace and later died in a plane crash. Amid these events, Zhou was designated as Mao's successor in , but struggled internally against the Gang of Four.
In , he fell out of the public eye for medical treatment and died one year later. The outpouring of public grief which his death provoked in Beijing turned to anger at the Gang of Four, leading to the Tiananmen incident. Though Zhou was succeeded by Hua Guofeng as premier and designated successor, after Mao's death Zhou's ally Deng Xiaoping was able to secure his place as paramount leader by
Early life
Youth
Zhou Enlai was born on 5 March in Huai'an, located in the province of Jiangsu, as the first son of his branch of the Zhou family.
The Zhou family was originally from Shaoxing in Zhejiang. During the late Qing dynasty, Shaoxing was famous as the home of families such as Zhou's, whose members worked as government clerks generation after generation.[3] To move up the ladder in civil service, the men in these families often had to be transferred, and in the late years of the Qing dynasty, Zhou Enlai's branch of the family moved to Huai'an.
Even after the move, however, the family continued to view Shaoxing as its ancestral home.[4]
Zhou's grandfather, Zhou Panlong, and his granduncle, Zhou Jun'ang, were the first members of the family to move to Huai'an. Panlong apparently passed the provincial examinations, and Zhou Enlai later claimed that Panlong served as magistrate governing Huai'an county.[5] Zhou's father, Zhou Yineng, was the second of Zhou Panlong's four sons.
Zhou's birth mother, surnamed Wan, was the daughter of a prominent Jiangsu official.[note 1]
Like many others, the economic fortunes of Zhou's large family of scholar-officials were decimated by a great economic recession that China suffered in the late 19th century. Zhou Yineng had a reputation for honesty, gentleness, intelligence and concern for others, but was also considered "weak" and "lacking in discipline and determination".
He was unsuccessful in his personal life, and drifted across China doing various occupations, working in Beijing, Shandong, Anhui, Shenyang, Inner Mongolia and Sichuan. Zhou Enlai later remembered his father as being always away from home and generally unable to support his family.[7]
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.[note 2] 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.[8] By the age of eight, he was reading other traditional Chinese novels, including the Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Dream of the Red Chamber.[6]
Zhou's birth mother Wan died in when Zhou was 9, and his adoptive mother Chen in when Zhou was Zhou's father was working in Hubei, far from Jiangsu, so Zhou and his two younger brothers returned to Huai'an and lived with his father's remaining younger brother Yikui for the next two years.[9] In , Zhou's uncle Yigeng, his father's older brother, offered to care for Zhou.
The family in Huai'an agreed, and Zhou was sent to stay with his uncle in Manchuria at Fengtian (now Shenyang), where Zhou Yigeng worked in a government office.[note 3]
Education
In Fengtian, Zhou attended the Dongguan Model Academy, a modern-style school. His previous education consisted entirely of homeschooling.
In addition to new subjects such as English and science, Zhou was also exposed to the writings of reformers and radicals such as Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei, Chen Tianhua, Zou Rong, and Zhang Binglin.[10][11] At the age of fourteen, Zhou declared that his motivation for pursuing education was to "become a great man who will take up the heavy responsibilities of the country in the future."[12] In , Zhou's uncle was transferred to Tianjin, where Zhou entered the famous Nankai Middle School.
Nankai Middle School was founded by Yan Xiu, a prominent scholar and philanthropist, and headed by Zhang Boling, one of the most important Chinese educators of the 20th century.[13] Nankai's teaching methods were unusual by contemporary Chinese standards. By the time Zhou began attending, it had adopted the educational model used at the Phillips Academy in the United States.[14] The school's reputation, with its "highly disciplined" daily routine and "strict moral code",[15] attracted many students who later became prominent in public life.
Zhou's friends and classmates there ranged from Ma Jun (an early communist leader executed in ) to K. C. Wu (later mayor of Shanghai and governor of Taiwan under the Nationalist party).[16] Zhou's talents also attracted the attention of Yan Xiu and Zhang Boling. Yan in particular thought highly of Zhou, helping to pay for his studies in Japan and later France.[17]
Yan was so impressed with Zhou that he encouraged Zhou to marry his daughter, but Zhou declined.
Zhou later expressed the reasons for his decision not to marry Yan's daughter to his classmate, Zhang Honghao. Zhou said that he declined the marriage because he feared that his financial prospects would not be promising, and that Yan would, as his father-in-law, later dominate his life.[18]
Zhou did well in his studies at Nankai; he excelled in Chinese, won several awards in the school speech club, and became editor of the school newspaper in his final year.
Zhou was also very active in acting and producing dramas and plays at Nankai; many students who were not otherwise acquainted with him knew of him through his acting.[19] Nankai preserves a number of essays and articles written by Zhou at this time, and these reflect the discipline, training, and concern for country that Nankai's founders attempted to instill in their students.
At the school's tenth commencement in June , Zhou was one of five graduating students honored at the ceremony, and one of the two valedictorians.[20]
By the time that he graduated from Nankai, Zhang Boling's teachings of gong (public spirit) and neng (ability) had made a great impression on him.
His participation in debates and stage performances contributed to his eloquence and skills of persuasion. Zhou left Nankai with a great desire to pursue public service, and to acquire the skills required to do so.[21]
Following many of his classmates, Zhou went to Japan in July for further studies.
During his two years in Japan, Zhou spent most of his time in the East Asian Higher Preparatory School, a language school for Chinese students. Zhou's studies were supported by his uncles, and apparently Nankai founder Yan Xiu as well, but their funds were limited; during this period, Japan suffered from severe inflation.[22] Zhou originally planned to win one of the scholarships offered by the Chinese government; these scholarships, however, required Chinese students to pass entrance examinations in Japanese universities.
Zhou took entrance examinations for at least two schools but failed to gain admission.[23] Zhou's reported anxieties were compounded by the death of his uncle, Zhou Yikui, his inability to master Japanese, and the acute Japanese cultural chauvinism that discriminated against Chinese. By the time that Zhou returned to China in the spring of , he had become deeply disenchanted with Japanese culture, rejecting the idea that the Japanese political model was relevant to China and disdaining the values of elitism and militarism that he observed.[24]
Zhou's diaries and letters from his time in Tokyo show a deep interest in politics and current events, in particular, the Russian Revolution of and the Bolsheviks' new policies.
He began to read avidly Chen Duxiu's progressive and left-leaning magazine, New Youth.[25] He read early Japanese works on Marx, and it has been claimed that he even attended Kawakami Hajime's lectures at Kyoto University. Kawakami was an important figure in the early history of Japanese Marxism, and his translations and articles influenced a generation of Chinese communists.[26] However, it now seems unlikely that Zhou met him or heard any of his lectures.[27] Zhou's diaries also show his interest in Chinese student protests in opposition to the Sino-Japanese Joint Defense Agreement in May , but he did not actively participate in them or return to China as part of the "Returning Home Movement".[28] His active role in political movements began after his return to China.
Early political activities
Zhou returned to Tianjin sometime in the spring of Historians disagree over his participation in the May Fourth Movement (May to June ). Zhou's "official" Chinese biography states that he was a leader of the Tianjin student protests in the May Fourth movement,[29] but many modern scholars believe that it is highly unlikely that Zhou participated at all, based on the total lack of direct evidence among the surviving records from the period.[29][30] In July , however, Zhou became editor of the Tianjin Student Union Bulletin, apparently at the request of his Nankai classmate, Ma Jun, a founder of the Union.[31] During its brief existence from July to early , the Bulletin was widely read by student groups around the country and suppressed on at least one occasion by the national government as "harmful to public safety and social order."[32]
When Nankai became a university in August , Zhou was in the first class, but was an activist full-time.
His political activities continued to expand, and in September, he and several other students agreed to establish the "Awakening Society", a small group, never numbering more than [33] In explaining the goals and purpose of the Awakening Society, Zhou declared that "anything that is incompatible with progress in current times, such as militarism, the bourgeoisie, partylords, bureaucrats, inequality between men and women, obstinate ideas, obsolete morals, old ethics should be abolished or reformed", and affirmed that it was the purpose of the Society to spread this awareness among the Chinese people.
It was in this society that Zhou first met his future wife, Deng Yingchao.[34] In some ways, the Awakening Society resembled the clandestine Marxist study group at Peking University headed by Li Dazhao, with the group members using numbers instead of names for "secrecy". (Zhou was "Number Five", a pseudonym which he continued to use in later years.)[35] Indeed, immediately after the group was established, it invited Li Dazhao to give a lecture on Marxism.
Zhou assumed a more prominent active role in political activities over the next few months.[36] The largest of these activities were rallies in support of a nationwide boycott of Japanese goods.
Biography examples for students: Adoption of orphans [ edit ]. Zhou narrowly escaped death and retreated to the rural areas of China, where he joined the remnants of the Communist forces. Mao, curiously, decided not to travel to Moscow, possibly because no senior Soviet politician had yet travelled to Beijing, or because Stalin had rejected an offer to meet with Mao in nevertheless, a huge memorial service in honor of Stalin was held in Beijing 's Tiananmen Square with Mao and hundreds of thousands more in attendance. In the end, the Nationalists blamed three local commanders for the fire and executed them.
As the boycott became more effective, the national government, under pressure from Japan, attempted to suppress it. On 23 January , a confrontation over boycott activities in Tianjin led to the arrest of a number of people, including several Awakening Society members, and on 29 January Zhou led a march on the Governor's Office in Tianjin to present a petition calling for the arrestees' release.
Zhou and three other leaders were themselves arrested. The arrestees were held for over six months; during their detention, Zhou supposedly organized discussions on Marxism.[37] At their trial in July, Zhou and six others were sentenced to two months; the rest were found not guilty. All were immediately released since they had already been held over six months.[citation needed]
After Zhou's release, he and the Awakening Society met with several Beijing organizations and agreed to form a "Reform Federation"; during these activities Zhou became more familiar with Li Dazhao and met Zhang Shenfu, who was the contact between Li in Beijing and Chen Duxiu in Shanghai.
Both men were organizing underground Communist cells in cooperation with Grigori Voitinsky,[38][unreliable source?] a Comintern agent, but Zhou apparently did not meet Voitinsky at this point.[citation needed]
Soon after his release, Zhou decided to go to Europe to study. (He was expelled from Nankai University during his detention.) Although money was a problem, he received a scholarship from Yan Xiu.[39] In order to gain greater funding, he successfully approached a Tianjin newspaper, Yishi bao (literally, Current Events Newspaper), for work as a "special correspondent" in Europe.
Zhou left Shanghai for Europe on 7 November with a group of work study students, including friends from Nankai and Tianjin.[40]
Zhou's experiences after the May Fourth incident seem to have been crucial to his Communist career.[clarification needed] Zhou's friends in the Awakening Society were similarly affected.
15 of the group's members became Communists for at least some time, and the group remained close later on. Zhou and six other group members travelled to Europe in the next two years, and Zhou eventually married Deng Yingchao, the group's youngest member.[citation needed]
European activities
Zhou's group arrived in Marseille on 13 December Unlike most other Chinese students, who went to Europe on work-study programs, Zhou's scholarship and position with Yishi bao meant that he was well provided for and did not have to do any work during his stay.
Because of his financial position, he was able to devote himself full-time to revolutionary activities.[40] In a letter to his cousin on 30 January , Zhou said that his goals in Europe were to survey the social conditions in foreign countries and their methods of resolving social issues, in order to apply such lessons in China after his return.
In the same letter, Zhou told his cousin that, regarding his adoption of a specific ideology, "I still have to make up my mind."[41]
While in Europe, Zhou, also named as John Knight, studied the differing approaches to resolving class conflict adopted by various European nations. In London in January , Zhou witnessed a large miners' strike and wrote a series of articles for the Yishi bao (generally sympathetic to the miners) examining the conflict between workers and employers, and the conflict's resolution.
After five weeks in London he moved to Paris, where interest in Russia's October Revolution was high.
Enlai zhou biography definition In office 1 October — 11 February In early May, , dejected and without completing his education, he left Japan, and arrived in Tianjin on May 9, in time to take part in the momentous May Fourth Movement protesting the Treaty of Versailles and the granting of Shandong to the Japanese. Stalin initially agreed to send military equipment and ammunition, but warned Zhou that the USSR's air force would need two or three months to prepare any operations and no ground troops were to be sent. On 25 December , Zhang released Chiang and accompanied him to Nanjing.In a letter to his cousin, Zhou identified two broad paths of reform for China: "gradual reform" (as in England) or "violent means" (as in Russia). Zhou wrote that "I do not have a preference for either the Russian or the British way I would prefer something in-between, rather than one of these two extremes".[41]
Still interested in academic programs, Zhou traveled to Britain in January to visit Edinburgh University.
Concerned by financial problems and language requirements, he did not enroll, returning to France at the end of January. There are no records of Zhou entering any academic program in France. In spring , he joined a Chinese Communist cell.[note 4] Zhou was recruited by Zhang Shenfu, whom he had met in August of the previous year in connection with Li Dazhao.
He also knew Zhang through Zhang's wife, Liu Qingyang, a member of the Awakening Society. Zhou has sometimes been portrayed at this time as uncertain in his politics,[42] but his swift move to Communism suggests otherwise.[note 5]
The cell Zhou belonged to was based in Paris;[43] in addition to Zhou, Zhang, and Liu it included two other students, Zhao Shiyan and Chen Gongpei.
Over the next several months, this group eventually formed a united organization with a group of Chinese radicals from Hunan, who were living in Montargis south of Paris. This group included such later prominent figures as Cai Hesen, Li Lisan, Chen Yi, Nie Rongzhen, Deng Xiaoping, and also Guo Longzhen, another member of the Awakening Society. Unlike Zhou, most of the students in this group were participants in the work-study program.
A series of conflicts with the Chinese administrators of the program over low pay and poor working conditions resulted in over a hundred students occupying the program's offices at the Sino-French Institute in Lyon in September The students, including several people from the Montargis group, were arrested and deported.
Zhou was apparently not one of the occupying students and remained in France until February or March , when he moved with Zhang and Liu from Paris to Berlin. Zhou's move to Berlin was perhaps because the relatively "lenient" political atmosphere in Berlin made it more favorable as a base for overall European organizing.[44] In addition, the Western European Secretariat of the Comintern was located in Berlin and it is clear that Zhou had important Comintern connections, though the nature of these is disputed.[45] After moving operations to Germany, Zhou regularly shuttled between Paris and Berlin.
Zhou participated in the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement.[46]:&#;37&#;
Zhou returned to Paris by June , where he was one of the twenty two participants present at the organization of the Communist Youth League of China, established as the European Branch of the Chinese Communist Party.[note 6] Zhou helped draft the party's charter and was elected to the three member executive committee as director of propaganda.[47] He also wrote for and helped edit the party magazine, Shaonian (Youth), later renamed Chiguang (Red Light).
It was in Zhou's capacity as general editor of this magazine that Zhou first met Deng Xiaoping, only seventeen years old, whom Zhou hired to operate a mimeograph (copy) machine.[48] The party went through several reorganizations and name changes, but Zhou remained a key member of the group throughout his stay in Europe.
Other important activities Zhou undertook included recruiting and transporting students for the University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow, and the establishment of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) European branch.
In June , the Third Congress of the Chinese Communist Party accepted the Comintern's instructions to ally with the KMT, led at the time by Sun Yat-sen.
These instructions called for CCP members to join the Nationalist Party as "individuals", while still retaining their association with the CCP. After joining the KMT, they would work to lead and direct it, transforming it into a vehicle of revolution. Within several years, this strategy would become the source of serious conflict between the KMT and the CCP.[49]
As well as joining the KMT, Zhou helped organize the founding of the Nationalist Party European branch in November Under Zhou's influence, most of the European branch's officers were in fact communists.
Zhou's wide-ranging contacts and personal relationships formed during this period were central to his career. Important party leaders, such as Zhu De and Nie Rongzhen, were first admitted to the party by Zhou.[citation needed]
By , the Soviet-Nationalist alliance was expanding rapidly and Zhou was summoned back to China for further work.
He left Europe probably in late July ,[note 7] returning to China as one of the most senior Chinese Communist Party members in Europe.[citation needed]
Political and military work in Whampoa
Establishment in Guangzhou
Zhou returned to China in late August or early September to join the Political Department of the Whampoa Military Academy, probably through the influence of Zhang Shenfu, who had previously worked there.[50] Zhou was Whampoa's chief political officer.[51]:&#;55&#; While he was serving in Whampoa, Zhou was also made the secretary of the Communist Party of Guangdong-Guangxi, and served as the CCP representative with the rank of major-general.[52]
The island of Whampoa, ten miles downriver from Guangzhou, was at the heart of the Soviet-Nationalist Party alliance.
Conceived as the training center of the Nationalist Party Army, it was to provide the military base from which the Nationalists would launch their campaign to unify China, which was split into dozens of military satrapies. From its beginning, the school was funded, armed, and partly staffed by the Soviets.[53]
The Political Department, where Zhou worked, was responsible for political indoctrination and control.
As a result, Zhou was a prominent figure at most Academy meetings, often addressing the school immediately after commandant Chiang Kai-shek. He was extremely influential in establishing the political department/party representative (commissar) system which was adopted in Nationalist armed forces in [54]
Concurrent with his Whampoa appointment, Zhou became secretary of the Communist Party's Guangdong Provincial Committee, and at some point a member of the Provincial Committee's Military Section.[note 8] Zhou vigorously extended Communist influence at the academy.
He soon arranged for a number of other prominent Communists to join the Political Department, including Chen Yi, Nie Rongzhen, Yun Daiying, and Xiong Xiong.[55] Zhou played an important role in establishing the Young Soldiers Association, a youth group which was dominated by the Communists, and Sparks, a short-lived Communist front group.
He thus recruited numerous new Communist party members from cadet ranks, and eventually set up a covert Communist Party branch at the academy to direct the new members.[56] When Nationalists concerned with the increasing number of Communist members and organizations at Whampoa set up a "Society for Sun Yat-senism", Zhou attempted to squelch it; the conflict between these student groups set the background for Zhou's removal from the academy.[57]
Military activities
Zhou participated in two military operations conducted by the Nationalist regime in , later known as the first and second Eastern Expeditions.
The first was in January when Chen Jiongming, an important Cantonese military leader previously driven out of Guangzhou by Sun Yat-sen, attempted to retake Guangzhou. The Nationalist regime's campaign against Chen consisted of forces from the Guangdong Army under Xu Chongzhix, and two training regiments of the Nationalist Party Army, led by Chiang Kai-shek and staffed by Academy officers and cadets.[58][note 9] The fighting lasted through May , with the defeat, but not destruction, of Chen's forces.[59] Zhou accompanied the Whampoa cadets on the expedition as a political officer.[citation needed]
When Chen regrouped and attacked Guangzhou again in September , the Nationalists launched a second expedition.
Nationalist forces by this time had been reorganized into five corps (or armies) and adopted the commissar system with Political Departments and Nationalist party representatives in most divisions.
Biography definition and examples Following many of his classmates, Zhou went to Japan in July for further studies. Sun Weishi , Zhou's adopted daughter, died in after seven months of torture, imprisonment, and rape by Maoist Red Guards. Zhou came upon the sixteen-year-old Sun crying outside of the Eighth Route Army Liaison Office because she had been refused permission to travel to Yan'an, due to her youth and lack of political connections. After achieving power, Mao later purged or demoted those who had opposed him in , but remembered Zhou's defense of his policies.The First Corps, made up of the Nationalist Party Army, was led by Whampoa graduates and commanded by Chiang Kai-shek, who personally appointed Zhou director of the First Corps Political Department.[60] Soon after, the Nationalist Party's Central Executive Committee appointed Zhou Nationalist Party party representative, making Zhou chief commissar of the First Corps.[61] The first major battle of expedition saw the capture of Chen's base in Huizhou on 15 October.
Shantou was taken on 6 November, and by the end of , the Nationalists controlled all of Guangdong province.[citation needed]
Zhou's appointment as chief commissar of the First Corps allowed him to appoint Communists as commissars in four of the Corps' five divisions.[62] Following the conclusion of the Expedition, Zhou was appointed special commissioner for the East River District, which placed him in temporary administrative control of several counties; he apparently used this opportunity to establish a Communist party branch in Shantou and strengthen the CCP's control of local unions.[63] This marked the high point of Zhou's time at Whampoa.
Political activities
In personal terms, was also an important year for Zhou. Zhou had kept in touch with Deng Yingchao, whom he had met in the Awakening Society while in Tianjin; and, in January , Zhou asked for and received permission from CCP authorities to marry Deng. The two married in Guangzhou on 8 August [64]
Zhou's work at Whampoa came to an end with the Zhongshan Warship Incident of 20 March , in which a gunboat with a mostly Communist crew moved from Whampoa to Guangzhou without Chiang's knowledge or approval.
This event led to Chiang's exclusion of Communists from the academy by May , and the removal of numerous Communists from high positions in the Nationalist Party. In his memoirs, Nie Rongzhen suggested that the gunboat had moved in protest of Zhou Enlai's (brief) arrest.[56]
Zhou's time in Whampoa was a significant period in his career.
His pioneering work as a political officer in the military made him an important Communist Party expert in this key area; much of his later career centered on the military. Zhou's work in the CCP Guangdong Regional Committee Military Section was typical of his covert activities in the period. The Section was a secret group consisting of three members of the Provincial Central Committee, and was first responsible for organizing and directing CCP nuclei in the army itself.
These nuclei, organized at the regimental level and above, were "illegal", meaning they were formed without Nationalist knowledge or authorization. The Section was also responsible for organizing similar nuclei in other armed groups, including secret societies and key services such as railroads and waterways. Zhou did extensive work in these areas until the final separation of the Nationalist and Communist parties and the end of the Soviet-Nationalist alliance in [65]
Nationalist-Communist split
Extent of cooperation
Zhou's activities immediately after his removal from his positions at Whampoa are uncertain.
An earlier biographer claims that Chiang Kai-shek put Zhou in charge of "an advanced training center for the CCP members and commissars withdrawn from the army".[66] More recent Chinese Communist sources claim that Zhou had an important role at this time in securing Communist control of Ye Ting's Independent Regiment.
The regiment and Ye Ting later played a leading role in the Communists' first major military action, the Nanchang Revolt.[56]
In July , the Nationalists began the Northern Expedition, a massive military attempt to unify China. The Expedition was led by Chiang Kai-shek and the National Revolutionary Army (NRA), an amalgam of earlier military forces with significant guidance from Russian military advisors and numerous Communists as both commanding and political officers.
With the early successes of the Expedition, there was soon a race between Chiang Kai-shek leading the "right-wing" of the Nationalist Party and the Communists, running inside the "left-wing" of the Nationalists, for control of major southern cities such as Nanjing and Shanghai. At this point the Chinese portion of Shanghai was controlled by Sun Chuanfang, one of the militarists targeted by the North Expedition.
Distracted by fighting with the NRA and defections from his army, Sun reduced his forces in Shanghai, and the Communists, whose party headquarters was located in Shanghai, made three attempts to seize control of the city, later called "the three Shanghai Uprisings", in October , February and March [citation needed]
Activities in Shanghai
Zhou was transferred to Shanghai to assist in these activities, probably in late It seems he was not present for the first uprising on 23–24 October,[67] but he was certainly in Shanghai by December Early accounts credit Zhou with labor organizing activities in Shanghai after his arrival, or, more credibly, working to "strengthen the indoctrination of political workers in labor unions and smuggle arms for the strikers."[68] Reports that Zhou "organized" or "ordered" the second and third uprisings on 20 February and 21 March exaggerate his role.
Major decisions during this period were made by the Communist head in Shanghai, Chen Duxiu, the Party's general secretary, with a special committee of eight party officials coordinating Communist actions. The committee also consulted closely on decisions with the Comintern representatives in Shanghai, headed by Grigori Voitinsky.[69] The partial documentation available for this period shows that Zhou headed the Communist Party Central Committee's Military Commission in Shanghai.[70] He participated in both the February and March actions, but was not the guiding hand in either event, instead working with A.
P. Appen, the Soviet military advisor to the Central Committee, training the pickets of the General Labor Union, the Communist controlled labor organization in Shanghai. He also worked to make union strong arm squads more effective when the Communists declared a "Red Terror" after the failed February uprising; this action resulted in the murder of twenty "anti-union" figures, and the kidnapping, beating, and intimidation of others associated with anti-union activities.[71]
The third Communist uprising in Shanghai took place from 20 to 21 March.
Approximately , rioting workers cut power and telephone lines and seized the city's post office, police headquarters, and railway stations, often after heavy fighting. During this uprising, the insurrectionists were under strict orders not to harm foreigners, which they obeyed.
The forces of Sun Chuanfang withdrew and the uprising was successful, despite the small number of armed forces available. The first Nationalist troops entered the city the next day.[72]
As the Communists attempted to install a soviet municipal government, conflict began between the Nationalists and Communists, and on 12 April Nationalist forces, including both members of the Green Gang and soldiers under the command of Nationalist general Pai Ch'ung-hsi attacked the Communists and quickly overcame them.
On the eve of the Nationalist attack, Wang Shouhua, who was both the head of the CCP Labor Committee and the Chairman of the General Labor Committee, accepted a dinner invitation from "Big-eared Du" (a Shanghai gangster) and was strangled after he arrived. Zhou himself was nearly killed in a similar trap, when he was arrested after arriving at a dinner held at the headquarters of Si Lie, a Nationalist commander of Chiang's Twenty-sixth Army.
Despite rumors that Chiang had put a high price on Zhou's head, he was quickly released by Pai Ch'ung-hsi's forces. The reasons for Zhou's sudden release may have been that Zhou was then the most senior Communist in Shanghai, that Chiang's efforts to exterminate the Shanghai Communists were highly secretive at the time, and that his execution would have been noticed as a violation of the cooperation agreement between the CCP and the KMT (which was technically still in effect).
Zhou was finally only released after the intervention of a representative of the Twenty-sixth Army, Zhao Shu, who was able to convince his commanders that the arrest of Zhou had been a mistake.[73]
Flight from Shanghai
Fleeing Shanghai, Zhou made his way to Hankou (now part of Wuhan) and was a participant at the CCP's 5th National Congress there from 27 April to 9 May.
At the end of the Congress, Zhou was elected to the Party's Central Committee, again heading the military department.[74] After Chiang Kai-shek's suppression of the Communists, the Nationalist Party split in two, with the Nationalist Party's "left-wing" (led by Wang Jingwei) controlling the government in Hankou, and the party "right-wing" (led by Chiang Kai-shek) establishing a rival government in Nanjing.
Still following Comintern instructions, the Communists remained as a "bloc inside" the Nationalist Party, hoping to continue expanding their influence through the Nationalists.[75] After being attacked by a warlord friendly to Chiang, Wang's leftist government disintegrated later in May , and Chiang's troops began an organized purge of Communists in territories formerly controlled by Wang.[76] In mid-July Zhou was forced to go underground.[75]
Pressured by their Comintern advisors, and themselves convinced that the "revolutionary high tide" had arrived, the Communists decided to launch a series of military revolts.[77] The first of these was the Nanchang Revolt.
Zhou was sent to oversee the event, but the moving figures seem to have been Tan Pingshan and Li Lisan, while the main military figures were Ye Ting and He Long. In military terms, the revolt was a disaster, with the Communists' forces decimated and scattered.[78]
Zhou himself contracted malaria during the campaign and was secretly sent to Hong Kong for medical treatment by Nie Rongzhen and Ye Ting.
After reaching Hong Kong, Zhou was disguised as a businessman named "Li" and entrusted to the care of local Communists. In a subsequent meeting of the CCP Central Committee, Zhou was blamed for the failure of the Nanchang campaign and temporarily demoted to being an alternate member of the Politburo.[79]
Activities during the Chinese Civil War
Sixth Party Congress
After the failure of the Nanchang Uprising, Zhou left China for the Soviet Union to attend the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Sixth National Party Congress in Moscow, in June–July [80] The Sixth Congress had to be held in Moscow because conditions in China were considered dangerous.
KMT control was so tight that many Chinese delegates attending the Sixth Congress were forced to travel in disguise: Zhou himself was disguised as an antiquarian.[81]
At the Sixth Congress, Zhou delivered a long speech insisting that conditions in China were unfavorable for immediate revolution, and that the main task of the CCP should be to develop revolutionary momentum by winning over the support of the masses in the countryside and establishing a Soviet regime in southern China, similar to the one that Mao Zedong and Zhu De were already establishing around Jiangxi.
The Congress generally accepted Zhou's assessment as accurate. Zhou was elected Director of the Central Committee Organization Department. His ally, Li Lisan, took over propaganda work. Xiang Zhongfa was made secretary general of the Party, but was soon found incapable of fulfilling his role, so Zhou emerged as the de facto leader of the CCP.
Zhou was only thirty years old.[81][82]
Zhou finally returned to China in , after more than a year abroad. In early , Zhou began to disagree with Li Lisan's strategy of favoring rich peasants and concentrating military forces for attacks on urban centers. Zhou did not openly break with these more orthodox notions, and even tried to implement in Jiangxi in [83] When the Soviet agent Pavel Mif arrived in Shanghai to lead the Comintern in China in December , Mif criticized Li's strategy as "left adventurism", and criticized Zhou for compromising with Li.
Zhou "acknowledged" his mistakes in compromising with Li in January and offered to resign from the Politburo, but was retained while other senior CCP leaders, including Li and Qu Qiubai, were removed. As Mao later recognized, Mif understood that Zhou's services as Party leader were indispensable, and that Zhou would willingly cooperate with whoever was holding power.[84]
Underground work: establishment
After arriving back in Shanghai in , Zhou began to work underground, establishing and overseeing a network of independent Communist cells.
Zhou's greatest danger in his underground work was the threat of being discovered by the KMT secret police, which had been established in with the specific mission of identifying and eliminating Communists. In order to avoid detection, Zhou and his wife changed residences at least once a month and used a variety of aliases.
Zhou often disguised himself as a businessman and sometimes wore a beard. Zhou was careful that only two or three people ever knew his whereabouts. Zhou disguised all urban Party offices, made sure that CCP offices never shared the same buildings when in the same city, and required all Party members to use passwords to identify one another.
Enlai zhou biography definition wikipedia London, England: Routledge, Though a firm believer in the Communist ideal on which the People's Republic was founded, Zhou is widely credited to have moderated the excesses of Mao's radical policies within the limits of his power. Tsang, Steve Mao expressed a desire to visit the United States, and Zhou received orders to manipulate Marshall in order to advance the peace process.Zhou restricted all of his meetings to either before 7&#;am or after 7&#;pm. Zhou never used public transportation and avoided being seen in public places.[85]
In November , the CCP also established its own intelligence agency, the Teke (中央特科; Zhōngyāng Tèkē), which Zhou came to control. Zhou's chief lieutenants were Gu Shunzhang, who had strong ties to Chinese secret societies and became an alternate member of the Politburo, and Xiang Zhongfa.
The Teke had four operational sections: one for the protection and safety of Party members; one for intelligence gathering; one for facilitating internal communications; and one to conduct assassinations, a team that became known as the "Red Squad" (红队).[86]
Zhou's main concern in running the Teke was to establish an effective anti-espionage network within the KMT secret police.
Within a short amount of time the head of Teke's intelligence section, Chen Geng, succeeded in planting a large network of moles inside the Investigation Section of the Central Operations Department in Nanjing, which was the center of KMT intelligence. The three most successful agents used by Zhou to infiltrate the KMT secret police were Qian Zhuangfei, Li Kenong, and Hu Di, whom Zhou called "the three most distinguished intelligence workers of the Party" in the s.
Agents planted within various KMT offices were later critical in the survival of the CCP, helping the Party escape Chiang's Encirclement Campaigns.[87]
KMT response to Zhou's intelligence work
In late April , Zhou's chief aide in security affairs, Gu Shunzhang, was arrested by the KMT in Wuhan.
Gu was a former labor organizer with strong mafia connections and weak commitments to the CCP. Under threat of heavy torture, Gu gave the KMT secret police detailed accounts of underground CCP organizations in Wuhan, leading to the arrest and executions of over ten senior CCP leaders in the city. Gu offered to provide the KMT with details of CCP activities in Shanghai, but only if he could give the information directly to Chiang Kai-shek.[88]
One of Zhou's agents working in Nanjing, Qian Zhuangfei, intercepted a telegram requesting further instructions from Nanjing on how to proceed, and abandoned his cover to personally warn Zhou of the impending crackdown.
The two days before Gu arrived in Nanjing to meet with Chiang gave Zhou time to evacuate Party members and to change the communication codes used by Teke, all of which were known to Gu. After meeting briefly with Chiang in Nanjing, Gu arrived in Shanghai and assisted the KMT secret police in raiding CCP offices and residences, capturing members who could not be evacuated in time.
The summary executions of those suspected of Communist sympathies resulted in the largest death-toll since the Shanghai massacre of [89]
Zhou's reaction to Gu's betrayal was extreme. More than fifteen members of Gu's family, some of whom worked for Teke, were murdered by the Red Squad and buried in quiet residential areas of Shanghai.
The Red Squad then assassinated Wang Bing, a leading member of the KMT secret police who was known for moving around Shanghai in rickshaws, without the protection of bodyguards.
Most surviving CCP members were relocated to the Communist base in Jiangxi. Because most senior staff had become exposed by Gu, most of its best agents were also relocated. Zhou's most senior aide not yet under suspicion, Pan Hannian, became Teke's director.[90]
The night before he was scheduled to leave Shanghai in June , Xiang Zhongfa, who was one of Zhou's most senior agents, decided to spend the night in a hotel with his mistress, ignoring Zhou's warnings about the danger.
In the morning, a KMT informant who had been trailing Xiang spotted him as he was leaving the hotel. Xiang was immediately arrested and imprisoned within the French Concession. Zhou attempted to prevent Xiang's expected extradition to KMT-controlled China by having his agents bribe the chief of police in the French Concession, but the KMT authorities appealed directly to the authorities of the French Concession, ensuring that the chief of police could not intervene.
Zhou's hopes that Xiang would be transferred to Nanjing, giving him an opportunity to kidnap Xiang, also came to naught. The French agreed to transfer Xiang to the Shanghai Garrison Headquarters, under the command of General Xiong Shihui, who subjected Xiang to relentless torture and interrogation.
Enlai zhou biography definition pictures Zhou's attempts at mitigating the Red Guards ' damage and his efforts to protect others from their wrath made him immensely popular in its later stages. His ability to work alongside Mao Zedong and other revolutionary leaders while maintaining his position during some of the most tumultuous times in Chinese history marks him as a unique figure in the Chinese Communist Party CCP. Zhou came upon the sixteen-year-old Sun crying outside of the Eighth Route Army Liaison Office because she had been refused permission to travel to Yan'an, due to her youth and lack of political connections. Main article: Nixon visit to China.Once he became convinced that Xiang had given his torturers all the information that they requested, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Xiang to be executed.[91]
Zhou Enlai later succeeded in secretly purchasing a copy of Xiang's interrogation records. The records showed that Xiang had disclosed everything to the KMT authorities before his execution, including the location of Zhou's residence.
Another round of arrests and executions followed Xiang's capture, but Zhou and his wife were able to escape capture because they had abandoned their apartment on the morning of Xiang's arrest. After establishing a new Politburo Standing Committee in Shanghai, Zhou and his wife relocated to the Communist base in Jiangxi near the end of [91] By the time Zhou left Shanghai, he was one of the most wanted men in China.[92]
Jiangxi Soviet
Main article: Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet
Following the failed Nanchang and Autumn Harvest Uprisings of , the Communists began to focus on establishing a series of rural bases of operation in southern China.
Even before moving to Jiangxi, Zhou had become involved in the politics of these bases. Mao, claiming the need to eliminate counterrevolutionaries and Anti-Bolsheviks operating within the CCP, began an ideological purge of the populace inside the Jiangxi Soviet. Zhou, perhaps due to his own success planting moles within various levels of the KMT, agreed that an organized campaign to uncover subversion was justified, and supported the campaign as de facto leader of the CCP.[93]
Mao's efforts soon developed into a ruthless campaign driven by paranoia and aimed not only at KMT spies, but at anyone with an ideological outlook different from Mao's.
Suspects were commonly tortured until they confessed to their crimes and accused others of crimes, and wives and relatives who inquired of those being tortured were themselves arrested and tortured even more severely. Mao's attempts to purge the Red Army of those who might potentially oppose him led Mao to accuse Chen Yi, the commander and political commissar of the Jiangxi Military Region, as a counterrevolutionary, provoking a violent reaction against Mao's persecutions that became known as the "Futian Incident" in January Mao was eventually successful in subduing the Red Army, reducing its numbers from forty thousand to less than ten thousand.
The campaign continued throughout and Historians estimate the total number who died due to Mao's persecution in all base areas to be approximately one hundred thousand.[94]
The entire campaign occurred while Zhou was still in Shanghai. Although he had supported the elimination of counterrevolutionaries, Zhou actively suppressed the campaign when he arrived in Jiangxi in December , criticizing the "excess, the panic, and the oversimplification" practiced by local officials.
After investigating those accused of anti-Bolshevism, and those persecuting them, Zhou submitted a report criticizing the campaign for focusing on the narrow persecution of anti-Maoists as anti-Bolsheviks, exaggerating the threat to the Party, and condemning the use of torture as an investigative technique. Zhou's resolution was passed and adopted on 7 January , and the campaign gradually subsided.[95]
Zhou moved to the Jiangxi base area and shook up the propaganda-oriented approach to revolution by demanding that the armed forces under Communist control actually be used to expand the base, rather than just to control and defend it.
In December , Zhou replaced Mao Zedong as Secretary of the First Front Army with Xiang Ying, and made himself political commissar of the Red Army, in place of Mao. Liu Bocheng, Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai all criticized Mao's tactics at the October Ningdu Conference.[96][97]
After moving to Jiangxi, Zhou met Mao for the first time since , and began his long relationship with Mao as his superior.
In the Ningdu conference, Mao was demoted to being a figurehead in the Soviet government. Zhou, who had come to appreciate Mao's strategies after the series of military failures waged by other Party leaders since , defended Mao, but was unsuccessful. After achieving power, Mao later purged or demoted those who had opposed him in , but remembered Zhou's defense of his policies.[98]
Chiang's Encirclement Campaigns
Main article: Encirclement campaigns
In early , Bo Gu arrived with the German Comintern advisor Otto Braun and took control of party affairs.
Zhou at this time, apparently with strong support from Party and military colleagues, reorganized and standardized the Red Army. Under Zhou, Bo, and Braun, the Red Army defeated four attacks by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops.[99]
Chiang's fifth campaign, launched in September , was much more difficult to contain.
Chiang's new use of "blockhouse tactics" and larger numbers of troops allowed his army to advance steadily into Communist territory, and they succeeded in seizing several major Communist strongholds. Bo Gu and Otto Braun adopted orthodox tactics to respond to Chiang, and Zhou, although personally opposed to them, directed these.
Following their subsequent defeat, he and other military leaders were blamed.[]
Although Zhou's subsequently cautious military approach was distrusted by hardliners, he was again appointed to the position of vice chairman of the Military Commission. Zhou was accepted as leader largely because of his organizational talent and devotion to work, and because he had never shown any overt ambition to pursue supreme power within the Party.
Within months, the continuing orthodox tactics of Bo and Braun led to a serious defeat for the Red Army, and forced the leaders of the CCP to seriously consider abandoning their bases in Jiangxi.[]
Long March
Main article: Long March
After the decision to abandon Jiangxi was announced, Zhou was placed in charge of organizing and supervising the logistics of the Communist withdrawal.
Making his plans in absolute secrecy and waiting till the last moment to inform even senior leaders of the group's movements, Zhou's objective was to break through the enemy encirclement with as few casualties as possible, and before Chiang's forces were able to completely occupy all Communist bases. It is not known what criteria were used to determine who would stay and who would go, but 16, troops and some of the Communists' most notable commanders at the time (including Xiang Ying, Chen Yi, Tan Zhenlin, and Qu Qiubai) were left to form a rear guard to divert the main force of Nationalist troops from noticing the Communists' general withdrawal.[]
The withdrawal of 84, soldiers and civilians began in early October Zhou's intelligence agents were successful in identifying a large section of Chiang's blockhouse lines that were manned by troops under General Chen Jitang, a Guangdong warlord who Zhou identified as being likely to prefer preserving the strength of his troops over fighting.
Zhou sent Pan Hannian to negotiate for safe passage with General Chen, who subsequently allowed the Red Army to pass through the territory that he controlled without fighting.[]
After passing through three of the four blockhouse fortifications needed to escape Chiang's encirclement, the Red Army was finally intercepted by regular Nationalist troops, and suffered heavy casualties.
Of the 86, Communists who attempted to break out of Jiangxi, only 36, successfully escaped. This loss demoralized some Communist leaders (particularly Bo Gu and Otto Braun), but Zhou remained calm and retained his command.[]
During the Communists' subsequent Long March, there were numerous high-level disputes over the direction that the Communists should take, and on the causes of the Red Army's defeats.
During the power struggles that ensued, Zhou consistently backed Mao Zedong against the interests of Bo Gu and Otto Braun. Bo and Braun were later blamed for the Red Army's defeats, and were eventually removed from their positions of leadership.[] The Communists eventually succeeded in re-establishing a base in northern Shaanxi on 20 October , arriving with only 8,–9, remaining members.[]