Zhou Enlai 周恩来
Premier of the People's Republic of China
In office 1 October 1949 – 8 January 1976 (&1000000000000002600000026 years, &1000000000000009900000099 days)
President	Mao Zedong Liu Shaoqi
Deputy	Dong Biwu Chen Yun Lin Biao Deng Xiaoping
Leader	Mao Zedong (CPC Chairman)
Succeeded by	Hua Guofeng
Vice Chairman of the Communist Party of China
In office 28 September 1956 – 1 August 1966
In office 30 August 1973 – 8 January 1976
Chairman	Mao Zedong
2nd Chairman of the National Committee Of the CPPCC
In office December 1954 – 8 January 1976
Honorary Chairman	Mao Zedong
Preceded by	Mao Zedong
Succeeded by	vacant (1976–1978) Deng Xiaoping
Member of the National People's Congress
In office 15 September 1954 – 8 January 1976
Constituency	Beijing At-large
Personal details
Born	(1898-03-05)5 March 1898 Huai'an, Jiangsu, Qing Dynasty
Died	8 January 1976(1976-01-08) (aged 77) Beijing, People's Republic of China
Nationality	Chinese
Political party	Communist Party of China
Spouse(s)	Deng Yingchao
Signature
Military service
Battles/wars	Eastern Expeditions Nanchang Uprising Encirclement Campaigns Second Sino-Japanese War Chinese Civil War

Zhou Enlai (pinyin: Zhōu Ēnlái; Wade-Giles: Chou En-lai; IPA: [tʂóʊ ə́nlǎɪ]; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976. Zhou served under Mao Zedong and was instrumental in consolidating the control of the Communist Party's rise to power, forming foreign policy, and developing the Chinese economy.

A skilled and able diplomat, Zhou served as the Chinese foreign minister from 1949 to 1958. Advocating peaceful coexistence with the West after the stalemated Korean War, he participated in the 1954 Geneva Conference and helped orchestrate Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. He helped devise policies regarding the bitter disputes with the U.S., Taiwan, the Soviet Union (after 1960), India and Vietnam. Zhou is best known as the long-time top aide to Mao Zedong, specializing in foreign policy. Their contrasting personalities made them an effective team, according to Henry Kissinger, the American diplomat who had extensive dealings with both men:

Mao dominated any gathering; Zhou suffused it. Mao's passion strove to overwhelm opposition; Zhou's intellect would seek to persuade or outmaneuver it. Mao was sardonic; Zhou penetrating. Mao thought of himself as a philosopher; Zhou saw his role as an administrator or a negotiator. Mao was eager to accelerate history; Zhou was content to exploit its currents.^[1]

Largely due to his expertise, Zhou was able to survive the purges of other top officials during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. His attempts at mitigating the Red Guards' damage and his efforts to protect others from their wrath made him immensely popular in the Revolution's later stages. As Mao Zedong's health began to decline in 1971 and 1972, Zhou and the Gang of Four struggled internally over leadership of China. Zhou's health was also failing, however, and he died eight months before Mao on 8 January 1976. The massive public outpouring of grief in Beijing turned to anger towards the Gang of Four, leading to the Tiananmen Incident. Although succeeded by Hua Guofeng, it was Deng Xiaoping, Zhou's ally, who was able to outmaneuver the Gang of Four politically and eventually take Mao's place as Paramount leader by 1977.

Early life[link]

Youth[link]

Zhou Enlai was born in Huai'an, Jiangsu province on 5 March 1898, the first son of his branch of the Zhou family. The Zhou family were originally from Shaoxing in Zhejiang province. During the late Qing dynasty, Shaoxing was famous as the home of families such as Zhou's, whose members worked as government "clerks" (shiye) generation after generation.^[2] To move up the ladder in civil service, the men in these families often had to get 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.^[3]

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.^[4] 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.^[5]

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.^[6]

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.^[7] 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 Xiyouji 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 Mansion.^[9]

Zhou's birth mother Wan died in 1907 when Zhou was 9, and his adoptive mother Chen in 1908 when Zhou was 10. 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.^[10] In 1910, 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 Shenyang, where Zhou Yigeng worked in a government office.^[11]

Education[link]

In Shenyang, Zhou attended the Dongguan Model Academy, a Western style school. His previous education consisted entirely of home schooling. 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.^[12][13] 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."^[14] 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.^[15] Nankai's teaching methods were unusual by contemporary Chinese standards. By the time Zhou began attending, it had adopted the educational model used at Phillips academy in the United States.^[16] The school's reputation, with its "highly disciplined" daily routine and "strict moral code"^[17] 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).^[18] 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.^[19]