Zhou Enlai: Chen Jian's book on Chinese Premier a study in contradictions

Zhou Enlai: A Life

Author: Chen Jian

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Price: $39.95   

Pages: 840

A flawed genius or a sycophantic “enabler” for a deranged despot? The jury is still out as one turns the last page of Chen Jian’s monumental biography of the late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. The book is the life story of one of China’s most well-known and much-admired political leaders but intimately intertwined with it is an engrossing chronicle of China’s turbulent history in the 20th century. More than that, the book is also a portrayal of China’s top leader, Mao Zedong, as both a visionary and a cruel and ruthless tyrant, and his complicated relationship with Zhou Enlai. The extensive use of Chinese, Soviet and other archives lends it a rare authenticity.
 

Zhou is portrayed as an intellectual sophisticate, an institution builder and temperamentally hewing to a moderate and middle course. Before Mao launched his disastrous Great Leap Forward in 1959, Zhou repeatedly advised against “a rash advance,” for which Mao made him the target of severe criticism. But time and again, Zhou submitted to and willingly followed Mao in the latter’s reckless campaigns to transform China and the Chinese people into a Communist utopia spawned by his fevered imagination. This enabled his political survival but at great personal cost and loss of dignity. Was there a higher purpose to this inordinate sacrifice and self-effacement?
 

Zhou’s patriotism and commitment to China’s national interest and economic advancement is not in doubt. It is also true that we see him, time and again, picking up the pieces and trying to restore order after each chaotic phase unleashed by Mao; of protecting critical and sensitive institutions and personnel, for example in China’s nuclear industry. He managed China’s external relations in these turbulent times with rare skill and diplomatic finesse. He was a reassuring and statesmanlike figure on the international stage. He also emerges unexpectedly as China’s chief “spymaster” having built up single-handedly the intelligence wing of the party and later the Chinese state. China owes a great deal to him but the question remains: Could he have used his immense prestige and leadership position to resist the worst of Mao’s destructive urges, working together with other senior leaders?
 

After the failure of the Great Leap Forward (1959-62) and the widespread famine that ravaged the countryside in its wake, Mao was relegated to the “second line of leadership” and it was President Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping among other party leaders who led the recovery. Could they have marginalised him altogether? Chen Jian believes that they could not because political legitimacy in Communist China was deeply embedded in the person of Mao as the leader of the revolution.
Chen Jian refers to the strange chemistry that bound Mao and Zhou together. Zhou may have respected Mao as the undisputed political leader and military genius, but he was also deeply fearful of Mao. The book relates how on one occasion, Mao was seriously ill and had become unconscious, seemingly about to die. Zhou was present when this happened and he literally peed in his pants and soiled himself. He seemed to be overwhelmed by fear at the prospect of Mao dying. When Mao recovered, Zhou said to him that power remained in his (Mao’s) hands.
 

Zhou himself was ill with cancer in the last few years of his life. Mao denied him an early surgical procedure that may have at least prolonged his life. Bur Zhou soldiered on, trying to restore political stability and bring about economic recovery after the worst ravages of Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76). His most significant contribution was the opening to the US and the West. The visit of then President Richard Nixon to Beijing in February 1972, and the Shanghai Communique adopted during the visit, transformed the geopolitical situation in China’s favour, restored its seat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and set the stage for China’s subsequent spectacular economic success, supported by infusions of foreign capital and technology.
 

The realisation of the Four Modernisations (agriculture, industry, defence, and science and technology) that Zhou reiterated in his last speech at the Chinese National People’s Congress in 1975, just months before his death, became the precursor to Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform and opening-up programme launched in 1978. Did Zhou’s vision for China win out over Mao’s? China’s present leader, Xi Jinping, may be harking back to the Mao era in seeking a highly centralised and personal power, and resorting to the same mass mobilisation techniques that Mao had perfected. There are echoes of the past, and China’s trajectory remains uncertain.
 

There are interesting details about Sino-Soviet relations. For instance, there are documented references to a Chinese request to Moscow for assistance in making nuclear bombs and the initial Soviet readiness not only to assist with personnel training and materials but also supply a design for a nuclear device. The Soviets withdrew the offer once they signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963.
 

The book has a record not found elsewhere of Henry Kissinger offering Zhou a “hot line” through which the US could convey timely warning to China of any Soviet missile launches against China. Zhou seems to have given his go-ahead but was severely reprimanded when Mao learnt of this. Mao saw this as China “capitulating” to the US. Zhou was criticised by the radical left wing, led by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, as a “capitulationist”. This seems to have caused him deep hurt; on his deathbed, he protested to his visitors that he was “not a capitulationalist”.
 

The proposal was never followed up.
 

Readers will be particularly interested in the sections relating to India. The main elements of the India-China story are well-known and Chen Jian’s account confirms them. The Tibet revolt of 1959 and the asylum given to the Dalai Lama in India significantly heightened threat perceptions in China. Border skirmishes began to be seen as India attempted to subvert Chinese rule in Tibet, however misplaced these perceptions were. Zhou seems to have been genuinely taken aback by what he saw as Jawaharlal Nehru’s rigid and uncompromising position on the border issue, perhaps not realising the Indian prime minister’s domestic political compulsions.
 

This is one of the most informative pieces of history writing on contemporary China and will remain a reference work for a long time to come.

The reviewer is a former Foreign Secretary