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Zhou Enlai: A Life Hardcover – 7 May 2024
by Distinguished Global Network Professor of History Nyu and Nyu-Shanghai Hu Shih Professor of History Emeritus Cornell University Jian Chen (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 14 ratings
The definitive biography of Zhou Enlai, the first premier and preeminent diplomat of the People's Republic of China, who protected his country against the excesses of his boss--Chairman Mao.
Zhou Enlai spent twenty-seven years as premier of the People's Republic of China and ten as its foreign minister. He was the architect of the country's administrative apparatus and its relationship to the world, as well as its legendary spymaster. Richard Nixon proclaimed him "the greatest statesman of our era." Yet Zhou has always been overshadowed by Chairman Mao. Chen Jian brings Zhou into the light, offering a nuanced portrait of his complex life as a revolutionary, a master diplomat, and a man with his own vision and aspirations who did much to make China, as well as the larger world, what it is today.
Born to a declining mandarin family in 1898, Zhou received a classical education and as a teenager spent time in Japan. As a young man, driven by the desire for China's development, Zhou embraced the communist revolution as a vehicle of China's salvation. He helped Mao govern through a series of transformations, including the disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Yet, as Chen shows, Zhou was never a committed Maoist. His extraordinary political and bureaucratic skill, combined with his centrist approaches, enabled him to mitigate the enormous damage caused by Mao's radicalism.
When Zhou died in 1976, the PRC that we know of was not yet visible on the horizon; he never saw glistening twenty-first-century Shanghai or the broader emergence of Chinese capitalism. But it was Zhou's work that shaped the nation whose influence and power are today felt in every corner of the globe.
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Print length 840 pages
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Review
Chen Jian has published a monumental biography of Zhou Enlai that makes him the pre-eminent scholar of the contemporary Chinese diaspora. [This] book, a comprehensive portrait of Zhou that took twenty years to research and write, will change [the way Zhou is perceived in the West]. Rather than merely applauding or attacking Zhou, it sets out to understand him at a level no previous work has approached...a compelling narrative.--Perry Anderson "London Review of Books" (9/12/2024 12:00:00 AM)
Vividly stages [the enigma of Zhou Enlai] in all its complexity so that readers are forced to wrestle with Zhou's paradoxes on their own. Chen's prodigious research using Chinese, English, and Russian sources helps him paint an old-fashioned but enthralling narrative. Free of the kind of jargon and theoretical gibberish that strangles much other academic writing, [this] biography brings twentieth-century Chinese history alive in new and very personal ways.--Orville Schell "Foreign Affairs" (8/20/2024 12:00:00 AM)
A life of Zhou Enlai...can be nothing less than an exploration of China's history during the greater part of the 20th century. Chen Jian has drawn on such an astonishing wealth of sources in Chinese archives and elsewhere that it is difficult to see how his biography could ever be bettered.--Philip Snow "Literary Review" (6/1/2024 12:00:00 AM)
Enlightening and moves along briskly...describes [Zhou's] initiatives with clarity and detail.--Lucy Hornby "Los Angeles Review of Books" (5/8/2024 12:00:00 AM)
A lucid, well-researched narrative...a satisfyingly fine-grained account of an influential figure often lost in Maoʼs shadow.-- "Publishers Weekly" (3/22/2024 12:00:00 AM)
Chen delivers an authoritative, incisive look at an unquestionably significant historical figure. An excellent biography and capable deconstruction of the labyrinthine mechanics behind the CCP's development.-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)" (2/29/2024 12:00:00 AM)
A must-read. Chen Jian's book illuminates Zhou Enlai's life from the earliest years to his final days with nuance, empathy, and scholarly depth. Along the way, he also tells the breathtaking story of Zhou's China. This is a rare work of history shot through with the lived experience, and even occasional pensiveness, of an eminent authority on twentieth-century China.--Sergey Radchenko, author of Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962-1967
At last, Zhou Enlai has the full-dress biography he deserves, one that uses rich documentary evidence to make an objective assessment of his enduring influence on twentieth-century China as well as the world. This is a profoundly important work of history.--Rana Mitter, author of China's Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism
Chen Jian's Zhou Enlai compellingly documents the whims, illusions, and eccentricities of Mao Zedong. I know of no better account of the arbitrary nature--but also the consequent waste--of authoritarian rule.--John Lewis Gaddis, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning George F. Kennan: An American Life
Communist China resembles a labyrinth. This brilliant study of Zhou Enlai's life has given us a key and a map to understand it. A masterpiece and a must-read for anyone who cares about China and its impact on the world.--Xu Guoqi, author of Chinese and Americans: A Shared History
About the Author
A leading scholar of the Cold War and the history of modern China, Chen Jian is Distinguished Global Network Professor of History at New York University and NYU Shanghai; Hu Shih Professor of History Emeritus at Cornell University; and Zijiang Distinguished Visiting Professor at East China Normal University.
Product details
Publisher : Belknap Press (7 May 2024)
Language : English
Hardcover : 840 pages
ISBN-10 : 0674659589
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5.0 out of 5 stars A monumental achievementReviewed in the United States on 20 July 2024
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Few people played as significant a role as Zhou Enlai did in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the history of the People’s Republic of China. And yet, we did not have a complete and thorough understanding of Zhou Enlai, who spent twenty-seven years as premier of the People’s Republic of China and ten as its foreign minister, until the publication of this comprehensive and definitive biography.
Chen Jian shows that absolute allegiance and loyalty to Mao Zedong and Mao’s utopian vision were essential for survival under the CCP regime for high-ranking officials such as Zhou Enlai. As one would expect, a key aspect of Zhou’s life was his relationship with Mao. Zhou and Mao had held different views from time to time, which helps explain why Zhou became a principal target of the CCP Ratification Campaign during the early 1940s. Owing perhaps to that experience, Zhou was determined to subject himself to Mao’s authority and power. During the Cultural Revolution, Zhou demonstrated his loyalty to Mao by signing an official document condemning Liu Shaoqi, then president of the People’s Republic of China, as a renegade, traitor, and scab. Still, Zhou became the target of another campaign during the early 1970s known as the Campaign to Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius. As late as the summer of 1975, a few months before he died, Zhou still felt the need to admit his mistakes and declare his loyalty to Mao.
However, this book is more than a comprehensive and definitive biography of Zhou Enlai; it is, among other things, a meticulous and painstaking examination of the evolution of authority structure at the top of the hierarchy of the CCP party-state, a structure that defines the boundary of acceptable behavior for CCP leaders. Chen Jian explains how Mao became the ultimate decision maker during the Ratification Campaign during the early 1940s and how Mao consolidated his absolute authority and power as the ultimate decision maker during the early 1950s. Chen Jian argues convincingly that Mao’s absolute authority and power and the inability of other CCP leaders to develop an alternative grand legitimacy narrative for the Chinese Revolution and the so-called “continuous revolution” after 1949 made it impossible for the CCP to prevent Mao from launching the Cultural Revolution.
In short, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in studying the evolution of CCP intraparty politics, CCP authority structure, and the CCP party-state under Mao.
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Amber W.
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding and Thought-provokingReviewed in the United States on 25 May 2024
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No doubt, it’s the best biography of Zhou Enlai and one of the richest histories of the founding fathers of Communist China that scholarship has ever seen. For a long time, Zhou has been buried in the shadow of Mao in historiography, but Zhou’s life story is much more than what the Mao-centric approach has stereotypically presented to us. Chen’s long-durée perspective (more than 40% of the book is about Zhou’s life before 1949) makes the book an incredible presentation of modern China, spanning the irredeemable late Qing Dynasty, the chaotic and war-torn Republican era, and the first decades of Communist China. It vividly shows what made Zhou so important to the history he lived through, to the historiography of modern China in which he became a historical figure, and to many people today who attempt to understand what happened to him, his party, and his nation.
Readers of this book should bear in mind a basic fact that many people outside China are often unaware of: China after 1949 has termed its history between the Opium War of 1839-1842 and the founding of the PRC in 1949 as “a century of humiliations.” Zhou was born during a period when his nation needed to be salvaged from the invasions of colonialism and imperialism. This was true in history when thousands of Chinese were starving to death, and the Chinese state was a victim of various foreign powers. Why did Zhou join the Communist Party? Why did he never give up the road of revolution? Why did he enthusiastically join Mao’s various campaigns of state-building? The ultimate question for him, as well as for Mao and other top rulers of the Communist regime, was what kind of state China should and could become. This book addresses all these questions and beyond. It’s amazing to see how the author has presented the complicated political and social histories through Zhou.
In the book, one can see a series of sea changes in Chinese society and state-building throughout the long 20th century. Many of those changes still play a crucial role in shaping our perceptions of the twentieth-century Chinese Communist revolution and its legacy, Chinese Westernization/modernization, the triumph of Communism, and the disasters of Communist state-building experiments in the second half of the twentieth century.
This extraordinary book engages with much more than just Zhou’s life.
7 people found this helpfulReport
Lawrence D. Ink
5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough biographyReviewed in the United States on 22 June 2024
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This book throughly researches Zhou's life. It shows his tremendous skill as a diplomat and survivor, but also portrays a man who sold out his principles. He was too weak to stand up to Mao even when realizing what Mao did was disastrous.
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Christian Schlect
3.0 out of 5 stars Comrade EnlaiReviewed in the United States on 21 May 2024
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A highly favorable account of the public life of one of the top officials in Mao's China. Zhou Enlai was a polished diplomat, a key party leader, and, above all, a survivor from the very beginnings of the PRC to his death by cancer in in 1976.
Quite a bit of his early career is of little interest to a modern nonexpert Western reader. Incidents, cliques, and intraparty turmoil are described in slow detail.
However, there are many areas of this history that will serve to benefit one's understanding of the modern world. The role of Chiang Kai-shek; the never ending quest to recover Taiwan for the PRC; Stalin's and the USSR's interactions with the PRC; the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; Nixon's visit to China; and above all and throughout--Mao.
To me a large problem is the author's lack of placing Mao's irrational actions, especially his concept of continual revolution into its true murderous context. Millions upon millions of people died, but here this largely goes unstated or underplayed. And Zhou Enlai was always there, helping to support Mao.
I came into this book admiring Zhou Enlai. I closed it thinking he should have either quit and retired to the countryside, or committed suicide, or killed Mao. Instead, near death, he still was writing such things as : "Since the Zunyi Conference, forty years have elapsed. Despite the chairman's endless teaching, I have still made mistakes or even committed crimes. About all this, I feel tremendous shame and regret. ..."
8 people found this helpfulReport
Whoever
5.0 out of 5 stars Well sourced and engagingReviewed in the United States on 9 June 2024
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Great detail & anecdotes based on original archival research
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MIN S. Katner
5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging, intelligent, and InformativeReviewed in the United States on 19 May 2024
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This biography of Zhou Enlai by Professor Chen Jian is thoroughly researched and well written. It is a wonderful read for anyone who are interested in modern Chinese history and a must-have reference book for anyone who teach Modern Chinese history!
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