Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) was, for decades, one of the most prominent and respected leaders of the Communist movement. Born into an upper-class family, he was drawn into the vortex of Chinese politics during the May Fourth Movement. In 1920 he traveled to Europe on a work-study program in which he met a number of future CCP leaders. He joined the Party in 1922 and returned to China in 1924, becoming the political commissar of the Whampoa Military Academy in Canton during the first united front with the Nationalists. He was in charge of labor union activity in Shanghai when Chiang Kaishek attacked the CCP in April 1927 and helped to plan the Nanchang Uprising against the Nationalists in August — the event now celebrated as the founding of the CCP's Red Army.
But Zhou was always most prominent during periods in which the CCP reached out to otherwise hostile political forces. He played an important role in securing Chiang Kaishek's release during the Xian (Sian) Incident of December 1936. Once the Nationalists and CCP had formed a second united front to oppose Japanese imperialism, it was Zhou who headed the CCP liaison team. Similarly, Zhou represented the CCP in negotiations with the Nationalists during the mediation effort of U.S. General George Marshall.
After the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, Zhou became premier of the Government Affairs (later State) Council and foreign minister. In 1955 he acted as China's bridge to the nonaligned world at the Bandung Conference, and in the same year helped engineer initial contacts with the U.S. He passed the foreign minister portfolio to Chen Yi in 1958 but continued to play an active role in foreign policy.
Zhou supported Mao Zedong in the latter's Cultural Revolution attack on the entrenched Party bureaucracy, and subsequently played a critical role in rebuilding political institutions and mediating numerous political quarrels. With the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Zhou advocated an opening to Japan and the West to counter the Russian threat. Zhou welcomed President Nixon to China in February 1972, and signed the historic Shanghai Communiqué for the PRC. That same year Zhou was diagnosed as having cancer, and he began shedding some of his responsibilities, especially to Deng Xiaoping who was rehabilitated in April 1973. Zhou was also a strong advocate of modernization, particularly at the Fourth National People's Congress in January 1975. Amid radical attacks on him during the Anti-Confucius Campaign, Zhou entered the hospital during 1974 and died on January 8, 1976.
Zhou continued to affect Chinese politics even after his death. In April 1976, the removal of memorial wreaths placed in Tiananmen Square in Zhou's honor sparked riots that led to the second ousting of Deng Xiaoping. With the purge of the "Gang of Four" in October 1976, his policy of "four modernizations" received the full endorsement of the new leadership. His selected works were published in December 1980, and three years later a memorial room for him was established in Mao's mausoleum.
