Zhou Enlai

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. 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." In 1913, 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. 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. The school's reputation, with its "highly disciplined" daily routine and "strict moral code", 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 1927) to K. C. Wu (later mayor of Shanghai and governor of Taiwan under the Nationalist party). 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.

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.

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. 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 1917, Zhou was one of five graduating students honored at the ceremony, and one of the two valedictorians.

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.

Life in Japan

Following many of his classmates, Zhou went to Japan in July 1917 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. 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; although not unexpected, given his struggles with the local language, these failures disappointed him deeply. 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 1919, 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. In his diary, he wrote:

In my opinion, militarism in the 20th century absolutely should not continuously be in existence. In the past, I had thought that it was militarism and elitism that might save China. Now I have realized that this is completely wrong!

Zhou's diaries and letters from his time in Tokyo show an interest in current global politics and events: the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Bolsheviks' new policies answered his quest for radical and novel ideas. He was also invested in local Japanese issues, such as the rice riots that took place in 1918. He avidly read Chen Duxiu's progressive and left-leaning magazine, New Youth. as well as early Japanese works on Marx, and it has been claimed that he even attended Kawakami Hajime's lectures at Kyoto University (although this is now considered unlikely). Kawakami was an important figure in the early history of Japanese Marxism, and his translations and articles influenced a generation of Chinese communists. Among the texts he read during that time were Kawakami's Tale of Poverty, Kōtoku Shūsui's Quintessence of Socialism, and American journalist John Reed's account of the October revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World. Zhou's diaries also show his interest in Chinese student protests in opposition to the Sino-Japanese Joint Defense Agreement in May 1918, though he did not actively participate in them or head back to China as part of the "Returning Home Movement". His active role in political movements only began following his return to China, which finally took place when, in March 1918, he discovered that Nankai University was set to open in Tianjin that year. Before his departure, he visited Arashiyama in Kyoto along with other former Nankai students.

European activities

Zhou's group arrived in Marseille on 13 December 1920. 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. His financial position let him devote himself full-time to revolutionary activities. In a letter to his cousin on 30 January 1921, 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."

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 1921, 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 1917 October Revolution was high. 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".

Still interested in academic programs, Zhou traveled to Britain in January 1921 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 1921, he joined a Chinese Communist cell. 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, but his swift move to Communism suggests otherwise.

The cell Zhou belonged to was based in Paris; 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 1921. 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 1922, 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. 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. After moving operations to Germany, Zhou regularly shuttled between Paris and Berlin.

Zhou participated in the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement.

Zhou returned to Paris by June 1922, where he was one of the twenty two participants present at the organization of the Chinese Youth Communist Party, established as the European Branch of the Chinese Communist Party. Zhou helped draft the party's charter and was elected to the three member executive committee as director of propaganda. 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. 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 1923, 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.

As well as joining the KMT, Zhou helped organize the founding of the Nationalist Party European branch in November 1923. 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.

By 1924, the Soviet-Nationalist alliance was expanding rapidly and Zhou was summoned back to China for further work. He left Europe probably in late July 1924, returning to China as one of the most senior Chinese Communist Party members in Europe.

KMT response to Zhou's intelligence work

In late April 1931, 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 arrests 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.

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 1927.

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.

The night before he was scheduled to leave Shanghai in June 1931, 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. Once he became convinced that Xiang had given his torturers all the information that they requested, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Xiang to be executed.

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 escaped 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 1931. By the time Zhou left Shanghai, he was one of the most wanted men in China.

Intelligence work in Chongqing

On 4 May 1939, the Politburo accepted Zhou's assessment that Zhou should focus his efforts on creating a network of secret CCP agents working covertly and for long periods. Communists were directed to join the KMT, if doing so would increase the ability of agents to infiltrate the KMT administrative, educational, economic, and military establishments. Under the cover of the Office of the Eighth Route Army (moved to a stately building on the outskirts of Chongqing), Zhou adopted a series of measures to expand the CCP intelligence network.

By the time that Zhou returned to Chongqing in May 1940, a serious rift had formed between the KMT and the CCP. Over the course of the next year, the relationship between the two parties degenerated into arrests and executions of Party members, covert attempts by agents of both sides to eliminate each other, propaganda efforts attacking each other, and major military clashes. The united front was officially abolished after the Anhui Incident in January 1941, when 9,000 Communist soldiers of the New Fourth Army were ambushed, and their commanders either killed or imprisoned by government troops.

Zhou responded to the rift between the KMT and CCP by directing Party leaders to conduct their operations more secretly. He maintained propaganda efforts via the newspapers that he directed and kept in close contact with foreign journalists and ambassadors. Zhou increased and improved CCP intelligence efforts within the KMT, Wang Jingwei's Nanjing government, and the Empire of Japan, recruiting, training, and organizing a large network of Communist spies. Yan Baohang, a secret Party member active in Chongqing diplomatic circles, informed Zhou that German dictator Adolf Hitler was planning to attack the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Under Zhou's signature, this information reached Stalin on 20 June, two days before Hitler attacked, though Stalin did not yet believe that Hitler would actually carry through with the attack.

Establishment in Guangzhou

Zhou returned to China in late August or early September 1924 to join the Political Department of the Whampoa Military Academy, probably through the influence of Zhang Shenfu, who had previously worked there. Zhou was Whampoa's chief political officer. 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.

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.

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 1925.

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. 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. 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. 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.

Military activities

Zhou participated in two military operations conducted by the Nationalist regime in 1925, later known as the first and second Eastern Expeditions. The first was in January 1925 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 Chongzhi, and two training regiments of the Nationalist Party Army, led by Chiang Kai-shek and staffed by Academy officers and cadets. The fighting lasted through May 1925, with the defeat, but not destruction, of Chen's forces. Zhou accompanied the Whampoa cadets on the expedition as a political officer.

When Chen regrouped and attacked Guangzhou again in September 1925, 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. 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. Soon after, the Nationalist Party's Central Executive Committee appointed Zhou Nationalist Party party representative, making Zhou chief commissar of the First Corps. 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 1925, the Nationalists controlled all of Guangdong province.

Zhou's appointment as chief commissar of the First Corps allowed him to appoint Communists as commissars in four of the Corps' five divisions. 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. This marked the high point of Zhou's time at Whampoa.

Political activities

In personal terms, 1925 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 1925, Zhou asked for and received permission from CCP authorities to marry Deng. The two married in Guangzhou on 8 August 1925.

Zhou's work at Whampoa came to an end with the Zhongshan Warship Incident of 20 March 1926, 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 1926, 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. {{Clarify}}

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 1927.

Political survival

Soon after they had been removed, Zhou argued that President Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping "should be allowed to come back to work", but this was opposed by Mao, Lin Biao, Kang Sheng, and Chen Boda. Chen Boda even suggested that Zhou himself might be "considered counter-revolutionary" if he did not toe the Maoist line. Following the threats that he would share in the fate of his comrades if he did not support Mao, Zhou ceased his criticisms and began to work more closely with the chairman and his clique.

Zhou gave his backing to the establishment of radical Red Guard organizations in October 1966 and joined Chen Boda and Jiang Qing against what they considered "leftist" and "rightist" Red Guard factions. This opened the way for attacks on Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and Tao Zhu in December 1966 and January 1967. By September 1968, Zhou candidly described his strategy for political survival to Japanese LDP parliamentarians visiting Beijing: "one's personal opinions should advance or beat a retreat according to the direction of the majority." When he was accused of being less than enthusiastic in following Mao's leadership, he accused himself of "poor understanding" of Mao's theories, giving the appearance of compromising with forces that he secretly loathed and referred to in private as his "inferno". Following the logic of political survival, Zhou worked to aid Mao, and restricted his criticisms to private conversations.

Throughout the next decade, Mao largely developed policies while Zhou carried them out, attempting to moderate some of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, such as preventing Beijing from being renamed "East Is Red City" (Chinese: 东方红市; pinyin: Dōngfānghóngshì) and the Chinese guardian lions in front of Tiananmen Square from being replaced with statues of Mao. Using Mao's authority, Zhou drew up lists of people to be protected from persecution, including Puyi and his family, the National Peoples Congress Standing Committee, the heads of the non-Communist parties, the judges of the Supreme Court and former Nationalist generals such as Cai Tingkai and Fu Tsoyi. He also protected some people who were in more serious danger of persecution by having them hospitalized at 301 Hospital, where sympathetic staff could keep them out of reach of the Red Guards. Zhou also ordered a PLA battalion to guard the Forbidden City and protect its traditional artifacts from vandalism and destruction by Red Guards. Zhou detested the yangbanxi. Despite his best efforts, the inability to prevent many of the events of the Cultural Revolution were a great blow to Zhou. Over the last decade of his life, Zhou's ability to implement Mao's policies and keep the nation afloat during periods of adversity was so great that his practical importance alone was sufficient to save him (with Mao's assistance) whenever Zhou became politically threatened. At the latest stages of the Cultural Revolution, in 1975, Zhou pushed for the "Four Modernizations" in order to undo the damage caused by Mao's policies.

Although Zhou initially escaped direct persecution, he was not able to save many of those closest to him from having their lives destroyed by the Cultural Revolution. Sun Weishi, Zhou's adopted daughter, died in 1968 after seven months of torture, imprisonment, and rape by Maoist Red Guards. In 1968, Jiang also had his adopted son (Sun Yang) tortured and murdered by Red Guards. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Sun's plays were re-staged as a way of criticizing the Gang of Four, whom many thought were responsible for her death.

During the later stages of the Cultural Revolution, Zhou became a target of political campaigns orchestrated by Chairman Mao and the Gang of Four. The "Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius" campaign of 1973 and 1974 was directed at Premier Zhou because he was viewed as one of the Gang's primary political opponents. In 1975, Zhou's enemies initiated a campaign named "Criticizing Song Jiang, Evaluating the Water Margin", which encouraged the use of Zhou as an example of a political loser.