Zhou Enlai

Zhou Enlai was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, diplomat and the first premier of the People’s Republic of China. He played a central role in foreign policy, state administration and relations between Mao Zedong and other party leaders.

Zhou represented China at the Geneva and Bandung conferences and helped manage the opening to the United States in the 1970s. His reputation for moderation and competence is balanced by his long service within a system responsible for mass political campaigns and repression.

Robert Elegant’s From a Far Land, also published as White Sun, Red Star, follows Shanghai families from the 1920s through Nationalist rule, Japanese occupation, civil war and the Communist victory; Zhou Enlai belongs to the revolutionary political world that increasingly determines what the characters can own, say and choose as the People’s Republic is established. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s Mao examines Zhou much more directly as Mao Zedong’s long-serving premier and diplomatic lieutenant, emphasising both his political skill and the compromises required to survive repeated purges and campaigns under Mao’s supremacy.