Zhou Enlai

Zhou Enlai was born on 5 March 1898 in Huai'an, Jiang Su, China, into a declining scholarly family that traced its roots to Shaoxing. Adopted as a child by his uncle Zhou Yigan and raised by his aunt Chen, he received a rigorous traditional education and developed a lifelong love for Chinese literature, reading classics such as Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber before the age of ten. After the loss of both his birth and adoptive mothers, Zhou pursued modern schooling at the Dongguan Model Academy and later at Nankai Middle School, where he excelled in Chinese, English, and debate, earning the nickname “the eloquent speaker.” His exposure to reformist thinkers like Liang Qichao and radical ideas during his studies propelled him into the May Fourth‑era student movements, and by 1919 he was editing the Tianjin Student Union Bulletin and founding the secretive “Awakening Society,” where he first met his future wife Deng Yingchao. A scholarship sent him to Japan and then to Europe, where he joined the Chinese Communist Youth League, worked as a journalist for Yishi bao, and helped establish the Chinese Communist Party’s European branch, gaining valuable Comintern contacts that would shape his revolutionary career.

Returning to China in the mid‑1920s, Zhou became the chief political officer at the Whampoa Military Academy, shaping the Communist presence within the Nationalist ranks and orchestrating the First and Second Eastern Expeditions. He rapidly rose to prominence, serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1949‑1958) and as the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China (1949‑1976), where his deft diplomatic skill secured China’s participation in the Geneva (1954) and Bandung (1955) conferences and later facilitated President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit. Throughout the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, Zhou acted as a stabilizing force, protecting countless officials from Red Guard excesses and quietly undermining the Gang of Four. Designated Mao’s successor in 1973, he remained a central figure in state affairs until his death on 8 January 1976 in Beijing, an event that provoked massive public mourning and accelerated the fall of the Gang of Four.